SiThEn – We are one

Day 2 started off right away after breakfast. First and foremost Core Group members took the initiative to categorize the 50 odd participants into 6 cultural groups for the easy fascilitation of the cultural event that was to take place on the 3rd day evening. The themes for these cultural groups came from the three prominant ethnic communities residing in Sri Lanka, Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim. Thus there were 2 cultural groups representing the Sinhala cuture and its way of living and 2 representing the Tamil community and so on and so forth.

Then we moved on to the conference hall and commenced the preceedings by singing the National Anthem. This was a significant feature since our prime motive of this three day workshop was to find ‘unity in diversity’.  Also because we believe that by understanding the other, we will come to understand and respect their ways of living and thus celebrate diversity and create a Sri Lankan identity that all of us can relate to, no matter how unique our socio-ethnic backgrounds and personalities are, after all ‘we are one’.

Then we moved on to the first group activity of the workshop, creating a time line. A ‘time line’ as in- we wanted  each ethnic group to relate to the wider audience from their unique cultural-ethnic perspective what were the significant events that contributed to the culmination of the riots and eventually the ethnic conflict that plagued  Sri Lanka for nearly three decades. So the participants divided themselves into the three main ethnic communities which were, Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim. I’m happy to say I had the privilege of sitting with my friends who represented the Muslim community and listening to their points of view. The most interesting thing was they all spoke in Tamil and for the most part I didn’t understand but half way thorough it they took turns to explain it to me in either Sinhala and English. Eventhough I couldn’t understand their language I concentrated on their tone of voice and body language henceforth deciphering their emotions specially with regard to the crucial moments in the Sri Lankan history that they thought contributed to the ethnic conflict was overwhelming. How I as a Sinhalese viewed things and how they viewed things seemed to be vastly different and I could some what understand how much they have suffered through out these riots, and especially since they were Muslims, as I clearly remember one of them pointing out,

“We are a bilingual community so we have the ability to mix and mingle with both the Tamil and the Sinhala community but unfortunately that also became a curse in the past era, because the Tamil Tiger Rebels thought we were supporting the Sinhalese while the Sinhalese thought we were supporting the Tiger Rebels. Ultimately we became victims in the middle of this whole situation, which was not our fight to begin with and was and still is battered from both sides”.

Words like these evoke human apathy at its best. So many emotional outbursts took place during the presentations of the timeline from each party.

The Sinahalese were quite calm and collected in their presentation. The perspective of the Tamil students was something that was completely novel to me. Then only it struck me that being a minority in a country or anywhere must indeed be a hard way of living. Then only did I understand the complete meaning of Shyam Selvadurai’s words from his novel Funny Boy

“We cannot live like this under constant threat from the Sinhalese, always second-class citizens in our own country”.

Being a minority that had been subjected to numerous and continuous cruelties and segregation by a handful of the rebellious so called majority their level of sensitivity was very high. For example when the Muslim community raised one controversial question a few of them were soon on their feet counter arguing. Also they had interpreted couple of our own actions which we thought were of no significance at all as deliberate actions committed to segregate them. Then only did I honestly feel true apathy for all of them, for us being Sinhalese we have the luxury of never being emotionally vulnerable and insecure in situations like these, but for them, these students who ever exactly our age they have probably never known the sense of security we as Sinhalese experience on a day to day basis which we take for granted.

That was one of those key moments where I felt the need for such workshops as SITHEN, in order to understand the other we need to create constructive dialogue, through language no matter if its Sinhalese or Tamil or English we need to make them feel we care so they can honestly open up to us. Through language comes understanding and better understanding signifies mutual respect for each other and ultimately the final goal of harmony and of ‘unity in diversity’.

The core group decided to have the exercise of ‘fish bowl’ in the evening of the same day so the participants could further voice their insecurities and longtime pent up emotions in a healthy non-confrontational manner, which I must say was a good way of rounding up the day since everybody was feeling good after being true to themselves and their emotions.

Day 3 commenced with the Core Group deciding to let the participants to the day’s activities in the cultural groups since it was a must for everyone to get to know their group members. This turned out to be great fun. Since the groups comprised of a healthy amalgamation of diversity be it ethnic or gender wise. The first activity for the third day according to the agenda was the creation of the ‘Identity Poster’. Each group had to construct an identity poster in which all the group’s members had to be represented along with their sense of self-identity. Each group came up with marvelous ways of self expression which was amazing to behold during the presentation of the posters. I must say this was a thoroughly entertaining activity, not only were we allowed to nicely stretch on our ‘Padurus’ to our hearts’ content but conversations that took place on those ‘Padurus’ while cooking up all sorts of pastel assortments are things I believe none of us will forget in a hurry.

Then came the activity where we had to build a structure with three plastic cups by maneuvering them with one rubber band and pieces of string which each member of the team held in their hands. This basically proved to us that unity is strength.

On the third day night came the much anticipated cultural event. The two groups that had the Sinhalese culture as themes opted for an enactment of the ‘Sinhala Awurudda’ and ‘Nari Bana’ the famous Sinhala Stage Drama. The two groups who had the Tamil culture as themes enacted a marriage ceremony. The two groups that had Muslim culture as the themes staged an enactment of a marriage ceremony and their traditional fasting ceremony. This produced the most amount of laughter for the whole three days of the workshop. It proved to be a big hit among all the participants.

On a concluding note this three day workshop provided each and everyone of the participants with a wealth of knowledge in terms of how to be sensitive to others’ predicaments, after all emotions are subjective. Only through better understanding  can we build better human realationships and I’m proud to say SITHEN did it for all of us who were there to be a part of it.