Rebirth road

Leaving the city, I’m a gray cloud made of workday dust and the worry of being late. I crawl into the bus, because I missed the train, in the careless trample of a hundred feet trying to get away.

‘But, why?’

“Don’t ask why. Just keep moving,” the road tells me. I submit.

The city fades. Lines of windows flashing television screens get slowly replaced by dancing shadows of trees. Glimpses of paddies emerge earthly green, cast into temporary pools of yellow by the lamps dotting the streets. With that, I find that I’m healed—from the Monday-to-Friday, from the apathy of the herd. I’m reconciled with the world.

On the road, I’m reborn. I’m a bird taking off from the street wire to spread my wings over the holy mountain. The air is a song.

I’m home, long before home.

---

This story ‘Rebirth road’ was inspired by a work of mixed media art by the Sri Lankan artist Dhammika Perera. Dhammika’s hometown is by the tranquil inland hills and rivers of Sri Lanka with a view of the sacred Sripāda mount; he had to take a daily commute to Colombo for his day job as a teacher at the University of Visual Arts. Talking about those years spent in commute, Dhammika says he remembers the healing in the journey. The experience of growing past the city’s exhaustion with the changing landscapes stayed with Dhammika, inspiring him in the art studio of his village home. This original art is now available at the PW Store.

Reading List, September 2022

-

Our monthly stories are productions looking to connect people to the magic of stories.

We create supplementary reading lists as a way to give you an insight into the inspirations and thinking behind our monthly stories. These reading lists take you behind the story, revealing the process of its making.

-

---

Rasa → Bhayānakam (भयानकं): Horror, terror. Presiding deity: Yama. Colour: black, Adbhutam (अद्भुतं): Wonder, amazement. Presiding deity: Brahma. Colour: yellow

-

Archetype → Ruler

-

-

This story was created based on the ruler archetype in the teachings of Carl Gustav Jung. According to his theories, the human mind is not a blank slate at birth (tabula rasa), and instead, inherits biological aspects, fundamental, and unconscious elements of our ancestors. This is where archetypes—proto patterns of the human mind—come in. Among the twelve archetypes of the human mind described by Jung, the ruler is one of the most recognizable and corruptible. The core desire of this archetype is gaining power and exercising control. The Ruler archetype is one of the most dangerous archetypes in its shadow, becoming authoritarian.

In the current socio-political context across the world, and in Sri Lanka where a majority of our subscribers live, we’re witnessing examples of the shadow rulers establishing totalitarian and authoritarian governments leaving little space for public opinion, let alone dissent. Jung’s teaching can help us develop a view of the world and its problems that includes the spiritual, psychological and the cultural.

Parallel to this, we worked with two main aesthetic flavours from the eastern Rasa theory—bhayānakam rasa which brings on moods connecting to terror and the adbūtha rasa evoking the strange and the mysterious. This reading list includes some of the literature, writing, music and films that inspired us in the making of this story.

• The emotion of terror, or bhayanaka rasa, has its origin in the dominant state of fear. The vibhavas of this state are hideous noises, sights of ghosts, panic, anxiety, staying in an empty house, sight of death, and the captivity of dear ones. The anubhavas of this state are the trembling of the hands and feet, change of colour, and the loss of voice. Its bhavas are paralysis, perspiration, fear, stupefaction, dejection, agitation, restlessness, inactivity, epilepsy, and death.

• Wood from kaluwara, Diospyros ebenum, or kaggawali, commonly known as Ceylon ebony, is highly valued for its incredibly dense heartwood, which takes at least a hundred and fifty years to mature into its coveted deep black. Kaluwara is a strictly protected species, but this rare wood is still illegally harvested by people and companies of influence.

• 2002, Female Ruler Archetype of Empress St Helena. Homza Christian,

• Stanford Experiment; The Stanford prison experiment (SPE) was designed to examine the effects of situational variables on participants' reactions and behaviors in a two-week simulation of a prison environment. Stanford University psychology professor Philip Zimbardo led the research team who ran the study in the summer of 1971. What happened when a few normal people were given absolute power and what they did with it. A cautionary true story about the human factor in cultism today.

• Don Juan Dharmapala or Dom João Dharmapala Peria Bandara (1541 – 27 May 1597) was last king of the Kingdom of Kotte, in Sri Lanka. He is also known as the puppet king of Sri Lanka, controlled by the Portuguese, he once bequeathed his entire realm to the King of Portugal. The Portuguese takeover of Kotte, however, was resisted by the people and would only be completed much later after Dharmapala’s death.

• There are few who have been stalwarts of Sri Lankan politics in the last half-century quite like the man often referred to as “the fox”. Ranil Wickremesinghe gained the nickname for his apparently wily ability to repeatedly resurrect his political career from the worst failures. Finally, last July, Wickremesinghe achieved what had appeared to be a lifelong political dream: he took the executive office of the president of Sri Lanka without a single vote from his citizens and through a parliamentary secret ballot.

• The leader who transitions from the shadow to the light side of their archetype understands their role as a compassionate facilitator instead of a tyrant. The Indian emperor Asoka and Paul—a disciple of Jesus Christ, are two charismatic leaders who played historic roles in the rise of their faiths, embodying this transition from the shadow ruler to the more benevolent form of the archetype; This paper—Asoka and Paul: transformations that led to effective leadership—by Cheryl Patton (Eastern University, St Davids, PA, USA) states.

• 2004, Tarot Cards: An Investigation of their Benefit as a Tool for Self Reflection. Gigi Hofer, Concordia University.

• The Sri Lankan devil bird: In Sri Lankan folklore, the Devil Bird or Ulama is a creature said to emit bloodcurdling human-sounding shrieks in jungles at night. Its precise identity is still a matter of debate although the spot-bellied eagle-owl matches the profile of Devil Bird to a large extent.

• The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil is a 2007 book which includes professor Philip Zimbardo's first detailed, written account of the events surrounding the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) — a prison simulation study which had to be discontinued after only six days due to several distressing outcomes and mental breaks of the participants. The book includes over 30 years of subsequent research into the psychological and social factors which result in immoral acts being committed by otherwise moral people. The book won the American Psychological Association's 2008 William James Book Award.

• 1991, Administrative Adaptability: The Dutch East India Company and Its Rise to Power. D. Gerstell.

• Kane's content mainly consists of short films as well as animations that induce terror asan aesthetic flavour. He has made films based on the Backrooms, and animations based on Attack on Titan. More of his work and details reveal Kane’s impressive knack for understanding the emotion of terror.

• New research digs deeper into the social science behind why power brings out the best in some people and the worst in others

• The Last King of Scotland is a 2006 historical drama film directed by Kevin Macdonald from a screenplay by Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock. Based on Giles Foden's 1998 novel, it depicts the dictatorship of Ugandan President Idi Amin through the perspective of a fictional Scottish doctor. The film stars Forest Whitaker and James McAvoy in these respective roles, with Kerry Washington, Simon McBurney, and Gillian Anderson in supporting roles. The title of the film refers to Amin's claim of being the King of Scotland.

• Bob Dylan - A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

• IDLES - MOTHER

• Colombo is not Sri Lanka’s capital, but it is the one city that you can’t avoid in matters of gaining access, and sometimes even viewpoints, to the world beyond. Understanding Colombo has much to do with exploring its unshakably commercial soul and origins.

>> Read the previous reading list

Monthly Story, May 2022

-

Image → A.Savin

Archetype → Caregiver

Rasa → Karuna (compassion, sorrow), with Adbūtha (wonder) as secondary and tertiary bhībhatsa (disgust)

-

-

Although Siri’s hands were watering the turmeric plants with perfect automation, her ears and mind were elsewhere. The loudspeaker tied to the coconut palm down the street was screaming something from the political protest being held at the edge of her watta—the little suburban quarter that Siri lived in. It bordered the dirty canal. Siri didn’t care for politics; She saw it as a game already lost. But, this government has pushed things beyond loss. The prices were brutal. Business had been so bad; and most of her clients, being as broke as she was, could no longer afford to escape their homes or wives. So, she half-listened to the political clamour while wishing they would just shut up and elect a real human for President. Why is the President never a real person who has had to stand in the gas line, or walk on asphalt under the Colombo sun when the bus fares hike?

Why is the President always a clown, a thief, or a psychopath dressed in human skin?

She sighed into the plants. At least, the turmeric plants were doing well. They’re going for two-fifty for fifty now. Siri scanned the leaves, picked up a young snail and flicked it into the canal through the wire fence. She watched the snail float away in the black waters with a flicker of guilt.

Do we live in a world where we have to steal someone else’s opportunity to feed ourselves?

Siri told herself that the snail will find sanctuary on the drainage barrier stopping the leftovers of city greed from floating into the sea. She caught herself reflected on the canal waters, broken into streaks of small currents. Siri felt utterly alone. Her bedmate hadn’t come home this week either; He could barely afford to drive his tuk-tuk to Colombo after the fuel shortage. But, what made Siri feel more lonely was the realisation that she didn’t really miss him; she just wanted someone to tend to. She watched the slow flow of the waters, unconsciously pulling at old hurts that are better left lost.

Siri was Siripāla then; another man with a job, wife and kids. Everything changed the day Siripāla came home to find his wife Leela arrested by the police counter-subversion unit. Soon, all that was left of Leela were old clothes, photographs and a certificate of disappearance. Their two boys were sent to their grandparents amidst the hills and paddies while Siri rented a cheap bunk room in the city to save every possible Rupee. This is where Siri first shared a room with a man. In the strange years that came, there were fewer and fewer visits home to the boys. Siri thought of her two sons; Jayantha would be fifteen now, and Jothi ten. She briefly toyed with the fantasy of bringing them here to live with her, but quickly threw the thought into the canal to float away with the snail.

Too much had changed to go back again.

Knees creaking laboriously, Siri got up to her feet and stood over the turmeric patch. The smell of sea salt came with the wind, making a strange combination with the canal stench. The protest up the street was still shouting about the cost of living. Whatever said and done, Siri was glad to have her house; She was free from the weight of rent that hung over the many heads in her watta. The ownership certificate for this perch-and-a-half plot cost her life’s savings. The canal bordering it was filthy, and the house was mostly gypsum board. But it’s hers. Siri just wished it wasn’t so empty. The devilishly loud children next door were getting an earful from their mother. Siri thought of the pandemonium that surrounded her in the tiny rented house all those years ago when she had a family—in another life. A full moon was swimming on the black canal water; it also swam in the liquid in her eyes.

Like the ocean, like the river, like water… always one with the other.

---

>>Reading list for this MS episode