THE DAWN DISPATCH

Dearest Reader,

Well. Does a lady ever receive the news she deserves? Rarely. But this week, our little island has once again provided material so generous that even the writer is beginning to suspect someone is writing the column for her. First, a matter of national urgency. Dehiwala Zoo has invited the public to name its newest Nile hippopotamus. Finally, a democratic exercise worthy of our attention. Forget ministries. Forget committees. Forget the endless meetings in which everyone speaks and nothing happens. Give us the hippo. I have considered the matter carefully. Dolly.

Speaking of institutions, Temple Trees has apparently been feeling nostalgic. Former President Maithripala Sirisena has reportedly been honored as the “President of the Happiest Era.” How lovely. There is something deeply comforting about declaring an entire political period happy after everyone has survived it. It is rather like looking at an old family photograph and deciding that because everyone was smiling, nobody had spent the previous hour fighting over the cake. Memory is generous that way. History, when sufficiently moisturized, can apparently become anything.

And then, naturally, our young people. We continue to tell them to study hard, dream big, stay in Sri Lanka, build something meaningful and believe in the future. Beautiful. Inspirational. Almost suitable for a school assembly. Then comes the practical advice: be realistic. Darling, you cannot spend twenty years telling someone to believe in the future and then act surprised when they start checking flight prices. It reminds me of the marshmallow theory. Wait patiently now and you shall receive something better later. Except our generation has been waiting so patiently that the marshmallow has gone stale. At this point, someone has eaten it, washed the plate and left the country. We cannot keep asking young people to sacrifice today for a tomorrow that nobody seems particularly interested in constructing.

Speaking of things nobody should have to tolerate, the internet has once again opened a door that sensible people would have preferred remained firmly locked. Reports of online groups in which men allegedly discuss the abuse of women and children with horrifying casualness are not gossip for the afternoon tea table. This is not another scandal to consume, react to and forget before dinner. There are certain things a society must refuse to normalize. Cruelty is one of them.

Then came the obituary brigade. Because apparently even death cannot guarantee a woman peace from people determined to make everything about themselves. There is something particularly pathetic about discovering the courage to be cruel only after the person you are attacking is no longer there to answer you.

Now, if you will indulge me a sentimental moment, Lady Diana. Decades have passed, generations have changed, fashions have become increasingly questionable, and yet her name still carries tenderness. That sort of remembrance cannot be manufactured. Affection, however, is rather harder to purchase. Zendaya, meanwhile, continues her birthday tradition with a baby photograph. A charming little ritual. The sort of thing that reminds the rest of us that apparently some people are allowed to grow older without immediately issuing a thirty-slide explanation of themselves. And I confess, dear reader, I have begun to wonder why all the good ones keep leaving. At this rate, Heaven must have opened recruitment. Someone upstairs is clearly assembling a rather impressive guest list.

But before we become too poetic, Sri Lanka has never been particularly interested in allowing sentiment to survive uninterrupted. Three Sri Lankan men were arrested in Unawatuna after allegedly slipping written invitations beneath the hotel-room door of a 63-year-old Australian woman, inviting her to engage in sexual activity with them. There is asking. There is flirting. There is consent. And then there is apparently launching a three-man postal campaign beneath a stranger's hotel door. Sweeties, she was on holiday, not attending an open house. One imagines she had packed sunscreen, clothes and perhaps a book. Not a committee of unsolicited suitors. Consent is not a complicated social theory. It is merely the inconvenient little principle that other people get to decide what happens to them.

And that, dear reader, is where I shall leave you for now, a lady must occasionally put down her pen before it begins smoking.

Yours in scandal,

The Dawn Dispatch