801 වැනි මිනිසා
Building on Alvin Toffler’s idea that people living today are the 800th lifetime since the hunting age, Ivan calls his children’s generation the 801st, who will live in a fully globalised world. Many Sri Lankans already work abroad, bringing in over US$4 billion in 2010, and more of the coming workforce will do so. He argues that education, certificates and the whole institutional system must meet international standards, that children need an international language, information technology and freedom from chauvinism, and that governance itself must change rather than waiting for politicians to find wisdom.
විශ්වවිද්යාල ආචාර්යවරුන්ගේ සටන
Ivan sees the three-month strike by university teachers as another expression of the crisis of the political system. He argues that the education system itself has helped produce the crisis, turning out professionals whose self-interest holds back society, and cites misconduct by leading accountancy firms. He agrees that Sri Lanka’s spending on education, and on higher education in particular, is among the lowest, and backs the demand for 6% of national income, but warns that such demands, better salaries and depoliticised universities cannot be won within this corrupt system, which the teachers must learn to confront.
දරුවන් බුද්ධිමත් කිරීමේදී නිවසේ තිබිය යුතු පරිසරය
Ivan argues that three decades of violence have damaged the country’s social psyche and that parents must shield children from the resulting culture, including what they see on television. Explaining how fast a child’s brain grows between four months and two years, he urges parents to care for mental as well as physical nourishment. He tells the story of John Stuart Mill, educated entirely at home by his father, learning Greek at three and logic at twelve, and while calling the experiment too harsh, draws from it the lesson that every home, rich or poor, should keep a collection of good books for children.
මරණය භීතියට හෝ කනස්සල්ලට හේතුවක් කරගත යුතුද?
Responding to comments overheard at the funeral of the poet Ratna Sri’s wife, Ivan accepts that some of his advice on family life suits the middle class more than the poor, and describes how his own mother lived with his wife in her last years. He then argues that retirement is a long stage of life, not a waiting room for death, and considers great deaths — Madduma Bandara, the Buddha, Christ and Socrates — as well as Gandhi and Tolstoy, who learned to cycle at 67, to urge older readers to live fully until the end rather than in fear.
දරුවන් ගැන වැඩිදුරටත්
Noting that his columns on life draw far more response than those on politics, Ivan continues the family series. Recalling how he mediated in a cousin’s mother-in-law dispute, he sets out four principles he taught his own children: married children should live apart from their parents; parents should not depend wholly on their children; mothers should stay home with young children; and grandparents should not be made into childminders. He writes of becoming a grandfather, cites Newton and Bertrand Russell, and urges parents to build cleanliness, order, honesty, self-confidence and courage in their children for a globalised world.
දරුවන් දීග දීම
Continuing his series on family life, Ivan turns to marriage. He recalls the baker in the house where he boarded as a boy in Katugastota, whose ‘theory’ was that what cannot be seen does no harm, and the romance of the baker’s son that the family tried to break. He warns parents against both indulging and overruling their children’s choices, against searching obsessively into a partner’s lineage, and against letting horoscopes ruin girls’ lives, and urges that daughters be encouraged to continue their education.
දරුවන් යහපත් හා සාර්ථක කිරීම
Prompted by the response to his column on retirement, Ivan writes about raising children. Gandhi, his hero, was in his view a failed father, and he describes how he kept his own weekends for his family. He argues that mothers should stay with young children through the long human childhood, that parental quarrels harm them, and that reading and chess build intelligence and self-control, drawing on how chess helped his son. He warns parents against forcing children into careers they do not want, and tells of his younger daughter’s school survey of social attitudes.
අපට කළහැක්කේ කුමක්ද?
Ivan argues that Sri Lankan society has become spiritually rotten after thirty years of violence within and between communities, which left widows, orphans and a population traumatised by fear, and armed criminals serving both rebels and the state. The war was won but the great transformation that should have followed was not attempted, and the corrupt political system is now close to collapse. Using the parable of a crumbling house, he proposes that a small group with a sense of justice should leave it and build a model community free of caste, race and religious divisions, and he invites debate on the idea.
විශ්රාම ජීවිතය සැලසුම් කරගැනීම
Writing as he prepares to retire, Ivan offers readers near retirement age his thoughts on planning the years ahead. He contrasts a retired acquaintance who kept working for the sake of purpose with J.R. Jayewardene, who had nothing to do after leaving office, and recalls how books and routine carried him through the monotony of prison. He urges retirees to keep the mind active through reading and chess, to write down their experiences, to keep an independent income and avoid fraudulent high-interest schemes, and to form cooperatives; he describes his own plans for himself and his wife and an idea for a small village of artists and writers.
දේශපාලන ක්රමයේ ගමනක අවසානයද?
Ivan argues that the political system is collapsing so fast that an explosion may be near. He cites some 600,000 people wanted on warrants, about 11 in every 100 adults, a conviction rate of around 4% against 70% in India, and extortion from private buses running to hundreds of millions of rupees a month. He traces the growth of a lumpen class of contract killers, extortionists and drug dealers to the post-1977 system, to politicians’ private militias and to the auction of liquor licences being replaced by patronage, and gives examples of land frauds, including a woman who came to him for help in Chandrika Kumaratunga’s time.