Dark day

The clock struck four and in a secluded office in Colombo, Kelvin made a mental summary of himself......Kelvin, age 29, failed mathematician, indifferent architect, unemployed plumber and now a minor administrative assistant at Gunasena Bookshop in Olcott Road. He felt old and depressed, horrible days lay ahead. People had said he showed a lot of promise when he was younger, then even said that he showed exceptional talent in numbers, where he wondered had it all gone wrong. He had learned the hard way that numbers don't always pay. Some people seemed to think that if you were good in numbers you would be good at anything how wrong they were. Lately he felt tired, of everything in general. A kind of dull ache seemed to permeate through his whole being. In a way he knew what was wrong with him, it was that he lacked common sense. He somehow always managed to do the wrong thing. He didn't know how it happened but somehow if he was in a queue to get chicken people behind him somehow got their chicken before him. 

That evening he somehow managed to miss the " Air conditioned express" bus that used the highway and had to take the slow bus through the traffic. It was a particularly bad day. The bus was caught in the heavy traffic in Peliyagoda and it was hot inside, the man next to him was continuously spitting through the window every twenty seconds, and it depressed him no end. Perhaps he had some throat problem and could not swallow, in any case he could not move to another seat because all the seats were taken. 

Then another thought came to him, he now felt it was not common sense he lacked but rather social intelligence. He was awkward in social situations, and hardly made any real friends. As one senior manager once remarked nothing ever happened when he was in charge because  he did not have any leadership skills. The sun was going down over the sea to the west and with it his mood. Why his mood was related to sunset was always a mystery to him, but when the sun set he felt even more depressed than he already was. Why was the sun so important he wondered.

But then a queer thought formed on his mind, he realized that he always was a man who worried about small unimportant things. Perhaps he should do the opposite. He decided to concentrate on important things. In a piece of paper everyday he would number and write the three most important things that he had to do that day and do them in order of importance before he did anything else. When he had done these three he would relax and enjoy life. The next day he implemented this system and suddenly felt better, in one week his depression had lifted. After one month he found that most of his problems seemed solved, and in three years became one of the happiest people in his Island.

From a flat jungle plane

From a flat jungle plane
Rises a gigantic rock
A great king built a fortress
To guard the dark nights stars

Written by: RJX

If you make a friend of Time

If you make a friend of Time
It wouldn't matter if you have no dime
For waves that break in the mangrove beach
Will pull your ship from that sinking reef

If the light house is far
And the mist blocks the north star
Follow the terns to the left
Or north or south whichever is best

An oyster that pricks your feet
Could have a pearl in some distant beach
A raft that is blown to sea
Will reach the Island of Serendib

Written by: RJX

The scientist

My grandfather had once been very rich due to his great inventions. He had the mind for big ideas. The scientific projects during the first half of his life made him a billionaire, but the featherbrained projects in the second half of his life left him in abject poverty. He had squandered his wealth, through charity and unwise scientific projects. He had spent millions of dollars in a project he carried out to duplicate a leaf and thereby end world poverty. It came to nothing. 

Then came his impractical idea of solving the energy crisis by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using a catalyst. In the laboratory it worked but when he implemented it in large scale it ran into endless problems, it wasn’t cost effective and had to be abandoned. Undaunted well maybe mildly daunted he started the endeavor to use the motion of the waves to generate electricity in a large scale, thereby providing the whole country and then the whole world with electricity, and the solving great environmental problems like global warming and pollution. In the end it became a sad joke. 

Some people believe that somewhere in his late forties he suffered brain damage due to the toxic effects of some of the chemicals he used during his experiments, namely mercury. There are times I believe that this might be true, for how could you otherwise explain one of his later projects. He firmly believed that the Sigiriya Rock Fortress was really a fallen meteorite and it had elements and compounds that have never been found on earth. He concluded that by using these chemicals he could create a chain reaction that would among other things - create rain at will, reverse global warming, make gold, reverse ozone layer depletion, create a totally indestructible metal. By the time this project was over everyone called him a fool, and he had lost all his money and fallen into debt. 

Written by: RJX

A dreary day

By the time he reached home night had fallen, a dark deep feeling had descended upon him. Codwin wondered dully what he could do. He wanted to stay up till late but he couldn't because he had to wake up very early and make the long journey back to work. It went on like this the whole week, like clockwork, the whole thing depressed him, so this is what the pursuit of money had lead to, it had turned everyone into some kind of trained, tired, animal. When the weekend comes he would sleep the whole day through exhaustion. Through the window he looked out at the sky, the stars had come out. The night was infinitely dark and strange, but the stars made the whole thing worthwhile. It was then that it occurred to him,  what he needed in his life were stars, something to dream about. He would travel to different parts of the island, and write about it, it would be part travelogue, part history lesson, part novel, part autobiography, he would even write about the stories people tell. Then weekdays and work would not be so depressing after all.

Sadly his knowledge about history or anything else about the island was very poor. He vaguely remembered from school that Sri Lanka gained independence in 1948. He did not know the exact dates but the Portuguese, Dutch and the English each ruled for roughly 150 years, although the last Sri Lankan Kingdom in the Hill Country fell only in 1815. Before that Sri Lanka was one of the great kingdoms of the ancient world, with Engineering feats which could match any in it’s time. A king named Parakrama Bhahu the Great once proclaimed  that he would not let a single drop of water flow to the sea without making use of it, and built an artificial lake which was so big it looked like the ocean, and he was but one of the many great  kings who ruled the Island. Another good example was a king named Dhatusena, who was famous for building tanks (which were really enormous reservoirs used to irrigate the land, especially in the dry zone and are still being used today). His son kasyappa who was a strong headed lad once demanded to see the treasure his father was always talking about, so Dhatusena took him to the lakes he built and said “this is the treasure I have built all my life”. This infuriated Kasyappa so much that he built a wall and sealed his old father behind it, and fearing the wrath of his half brother who was the rightful heir to the throne he built a fortress on a gigantic rock in the middle of the jungle. This fortress which really was also his palace is called the Sigiriya Rock Fortress and is said to be the eighth wonder of the world. And that was about all he knew about the history.

Written by: RJX

We all have to be the way we are made

As the bus moved slowly over the Kelani bridge, silent, mysterious and fatal the river moved below. Inside sat Codwin, who had to take this route everyday to and from work. It was hot inside and he wondered dully whether this was due to global warming, or because the monsoon rains had been delayed, or was there some other factor at play. Then he wondered whether there really was something called global warming for there were many scientists who said it was all rubbish. How do...es it all work he wondered, this whole global warming thing, the traffic congestion, the heat and everything else. Just then a gecko made a hideous chik chak chik cry.

Codwin knew well that geckos are found only in households so how did this one get into the bus?. Maybe it should be made the national animal instead of the stupid jungle fowl. The heat was getting to him and he was thinking rubbish, if the bus moved faster this would create a kind of “artificial wind” which would cool things down. Self consciously he tried to read the newspaper he bought, but then he gave it up in despair.

In another half an hour when they were around Wattala the sun would set over the sea to the west and with it his mood. It was not going well for Codwin, but in a way he really liked the weather. He knew that despite the oppressive heat the weather here was good. The sun shone a little brighter and when it rained it rained a lot harder. He would have hated to have been born in a country where the sun was dull and all the trees looked like Christmas trees or a country where the sun was hot and there were no trees at all. And then he realized he liked his country........... we all have to be the way we are made…..thought he…..and we all have to be where we are made……….and for him it was this Island.

Written by: RJX

Rainmaker

My uncle was once a world famous scientist and inventor, but now nobody took him seriously. For all his brilliance if two words could be used to describe him they would be Extremely Eccentric. He had the strange habit of suddenly asking a physics question in the middle of a normal conversation and you were liable to get scolded if you did not give a satisfactory answer. For this reason some people including many of his former colleagues avoided him. Some said it was old age encroaching, some said it was an illness of the mind caused by chemical experiments with mercury when he was younger.

But apart from this eccentricity he was a kind and friendly man and as much as I avoided him I could not help feeling guilty so one day I went and met him. "Oh there you are at last, you numbskull, you have been avoiding me for one month" said he. "I had my exams, but it was all in vain for they asked questions from just the part of the syllabus that I avoided" said I. "Serves you right, now tell me how the Universe was created" said he. "Well according to the Big bang theory it all started as an infinitely small primeval atom, and it expanded to form the stars, planets, galaxies and everything else in the universe. But what the theory does not explain is how the primeval atom came to be in the first place and what was there before that" said I

"That’s right, it doesn't explain it, but I found the answer for that too, though it is a secret and I don't want to tell it to you right now. But I have something interesting to show you look out of the window" said he. Outside was an enormous metal tower, and a field of what looked like huge batteries. "The world is facing an energy crisis, economies have fallen because of it and it is only going to get worse, but I solved that problem through this invention. Look what happens when I press this switch" said he. As he pressed the switch there was a crackling sound and within minutes dark clouds appeared over the tower. Soon it turned into a terrible thunderstorm. "You see Thomas this tower has a charge that attracts lightning, which leads to a chain reaction that causes thunderstorms" said he. Soon lightning discharged in the tower almost continuously making an ear splitting noise. "Cant you see what's happening Thomas, I am converting the static charge in the lightning into chemical energy in the field batteries which is then used to make an electric current that could be used by people” said he.

Two weeks later I returned and to my utter dismay he asked “What do you know of the theory of relativity”. “Well uncle according to it time is relative and not absolute. The faster you move the slower time passes for you. As you approach the speed of light Time stops” said I. “But what has the speed of light to do with time, you pinhead” said he. “I do not know though I have often wondered” said I. “No you idiot, Light and other electromagnetic waves move at the speed of light and even in a stationery object the small particles that make it move at the speed of light. But when the whole object moves the need to move is compensated so the small particles that make it move slower making it look like time moves slower for it. But when I tell this theory to other scientist they call me a nut” said he.

“But uncle don’t worry about it, for your lightning machine will make you famous, nobody ever figured out the way to make electricity from lightning” said I. My uncle’s face darkened as I said this and he said “That’s where the problem is Thomas, I can’t present my invention to the world for it would be misused. Imagine what a superpower could do if it got its hand on my invention. It could even be used as a weapon. I don't want my invention to be used to kill people, So I decided to destroy it, in fact I already have” said he. My uncle died two months later, I think of a broken heart because he had to destroy his precious invention. I do not know if his theory of the universe was correct but I know that he was the greatest scientist nobody ever talked about.

Written by: RJX