Fieldwork has been an anthology of the unexpected. A compendium of awkwardness. An omnibus of convoluted existences. It doesn’t compare to those poetic accounts of isolated beaches and grass skirted people wearing frangipani garlands in their hair, ready-to-talk with straightforward kinship diagrams etched on their palms. It’s a confrontation of real lives tangled up in very real problems like alcoholism, debt, truancy, poverty and incest. It’s sometimes difficult to contain horror and disbelief at stories I’ve been hearing because truth be told, every mention of the past percolates readily into the grave predicament of the present. Sometimes it’s hard to be sympathetic and keep a straight face, considering the sheer theme of dependency of the situation. The dependency not simply on moonshine, the money lender and the men of the houses, but the dependency on institution. Instances where, we would rather parch in the sun and soak in the rain than fix our own roofs, because it’s the management’s job to provide for us. The patriarchy and the paternalism of the plantation societies has transformed into a rising culture of dependency. One which smells like deep open drains clogged with refuse flowing or stagnating before two-roomed houses for 5 people, the lack of sanitation fused with the tang of drying tea leaves in the air. One which needs to be fixed.
Perhaps the line between anthropology and advocacy flourished through these experiences of witnessing injustice and neglect. Yet, here I am put off by the dependency it has fostered like a titanic behemoth casting a long and terrible shadow (as our good man Berger would say). Do we blame colonialism, for the hierarchies it bred or the post-colonial planters who exploited the white native hierarchy to create more critical problems?
However, the title of the post stems from the last weekend at home while panicking over a crashed laptop.
The loudspeakers started bright and early, LOUD enough to be noxious, unintelligible noise. The kind that drums in your ears, making your sanity teeter on the edge of a steep precipice. They were Buddhist songs as far as I could tell, but all meaning, all purpose was lost in the rude loudness that echoed across the streets. I live in the suburbs, lovely part of town really with a canal constantly on the verge of flooding the golf course at the slightest hint of rain and a dozen checkpoints considering the proximity to the parliament. Best of all, constantly interrupted-by-stop-paddles journeys aside, it is quiet. Can’t say I dislike it that way. I spend most of the day at the opposing end of the house, attempting drown out the wailing megaphone songs with ipod headphones glued to my ears. From religious songs it went to other songs, other songs to a bunch of children singing, badly if you were wondering.
The driver says that they all having an all-night pirith ceremony to bless the war heroes and the area. Bit late no? And so this noise, this very loud and unbearable noise powered on through to the night. Loud, obnoxious, unbecoming of any religious matter. The kind of sound that makes generally politically correct types like me blurt out sporadic tirades of very politically incorrect things. Fair enough, my religion too and I sense that the rest of the household is appalled at my intolerance. The intention is for the well being of the area. I’m area too, I argue back and I never agreed to this noise, noise, noise. By now my cosmological karma is way off balance with all of this ranting but for heaven’s sake… the children singing badly, was the dried icing on a week old cake. The glazed cherries (now the just syrupy sludge, being a week later) was that it lasted ALL night, which meant that I slept two winks and a nod as the volume increased, increased, and increased (To keep the ammes from dozing off at 2 am perhaps?)
First, not everyone in the area subscribes to the spiritual truths imparted in pirith. It maybe against your religion entirely to listed to the vociferous words of another creed. And by vociferous, the loud which drowns out all coherence and meaning making religion sound pollution. Thereby, if the meaning of the words are the very thing which showers blessings upon the good and virtuous upasaka crowd of the area, what does sound pollution do? Shouldn’t the blessings come from the intent as opposed to the volume of the speaker system? I am certain in the little Buddhist scripture that I know that there’s something sinful about empty words. Empty words, empty noise. Same difference as far as I’m concerned. The of course the sound factor make generally placid types (me for an example) into incensed screaming messes unable to bear the loudness of this empty noise! Thus, by some sort of complex cosmic proxy, they are turning me into a veritable hater, criticizing words of worship by their clever idea of loud blessing. How many years in hell is that again?
A few words of wisdom to the wise. Intent not volume.
