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The dialogic mode - introduction to the form of presentation

The panel discussion is a well-known method of airing points of view. It allows the panellists to try to persuade the audience to their respective points of view. The views they voice are their own.

What I propose to do is to allow writers and speakers on the peace process and allied subjects to air their views by quoting them and by not putting words in their mouths to misrepresent them. This will hopefully enable readers to judge them on their own merits.

There is however a compere or mediator in this imaginary dialog, who will direct the discussion. That will be Socrates, reborn in 2002 in Colombo. Socrates will have the benefit of knowing much more than he knew, when he lived in Athens long ago.

Socrates: Welcome to this chat room friends. Let me introduce myself as well as the others in this room. You know me, don't you? The guy who preferred to die than recant. I wasn't as bad as they make me out in the ancient Greek books.

The accusation was that Socrates is an evil doer and a curious person, who searches into things under the earth, and in heaven, and he makes the worse appear the better cause. But I got over it by simply agreeing to die when they expected me to deny.

So here I am in cyberspace and ready to take off in a three wheeler to listen to different views on the three wheeler as a major actor on the Colombo traffic scene. We have with us The Three Wheeler Drives Guild, Mr. O.R. User, representing "Other road users," Engineer Anton Nanayakkara of the National Committee for the Prevention of Accidents, Engineer Karunasena Hettiaratchi, Secretary of Marga Mithuro, (friends on the road) a voluntary association for traffic matters, Johan de Livera of Titus Stores, who talks of different 3 wheeler and Dr. John Gooneratne of the Peace Secretariat, who appears as a critical and supportive reader of this column.

Our hope is to start a peace process on the road, starting from Road Rage and ending at Marga Mithuro.

Reader's Views: Dr. John Gooneratne, who majored in Latin and Greek in Peradeniya in the 1950s, formerly of the Diplomatic Service and presently attached to the Peace Secretariat has taken the trouble to read the past dialogs (there are 9 of them with this) and has come up with some comments, which I appreciate very much.

Without necessarily agreeing with them, I quote him because his voice and other voices will make the dialog richer.

And I do hope other readers will respond to these dialogs by e mail to Wilfrid@co17.metta.lk

Dr. John Gooneratne: The format of the Socratic dialogue is a good one to put across points of view. Letting the actors speak from themselves is a useful device. Let me now point out some weak points, as I saw them.

1) In some of the dialogues there were too many 'actors'. As a result you were not able to focus on them more, and consequently the reader would not be able to get a good idea of the 'actor', and his message.

2) When you have too many 'actors' you have to develop so many 'characters,' and that is difficult to do in the short space of one article.

3) In many articles there were too many subjects discussed. Sometimes they were discussed rather perfunctorily. A flitting from one subject to another. The reader cannot hold all these in his attention grip.

4) On occasion, the subjects to be discussed weren't well focused on.

5) In some cases the subjects were rather abstruse historically.

My suggestions

1)Stick to one topic for each dialogue. Don't mix subjects.

2) Have just two or three 'actors' for each discussion, after introducing them in a way as to enable the reader to get an idea of him/her. In this respect 'Lankapage' is a rather disembowelled character. It is a site that doesn't seem to have a character of its own, unlike, for example, Tamilnet. Now there is a good 'actor.

Wilfrid Jayasurya: Thank you Dr. Gooneratne. Dialog 7 was on the single topic of the banking system and the viability of the private sector and dialog 8 on the "Is there one best way of learning and teaching a language?"

They satisfy, I think, your criteria. But I found that some readers, who liked the dish of the day to contain vegetarian, meatarian and eggetarian food, (1950s Peradeniya terminology, remember?), eating it in any old way like in a buffet, or mixing it up with their fingers before plopping it into their heads, did not relish the sit down three course dinner, issaraha khema, with green pea soup, steak and boiled vegetables, and caramel pudding, eaten with soup spoon, desert spoon, fork and knife.

So my purpose lies to vary the menu. But I like very much the metaphor of drama that you have superimposed on my metaphor of dialog, thereby sharpening our insight on what goes on. Also the word "disembowelled" to describe Lankapage, which claims to be a digest of the "hottest news".

Thank you once again. Let me move on to the subject of road rage and three wheelers, which did not ply on the streets of Athens, in my time.

Three Wheelers Daily News March 27 on page 31. Large advertisement. A picture of a saloon car ("doctor Sunny?") driving parallel to a 3 wheeler. Young couple in saloon. Young couple with child and driver in 3 wheeler. Everyone smiling except the 3 wheeler driver who is intent on the "road ahead".

The Caption was "Accept our well-being too. It's not everyone who could afford to travel in luxury vehicles. Yet because of three wheelers everyone in the society have the means of travelling in vehicles. We as three wheeler drivers will always cherish your support. A statement by 3 wheeler drivers. 3 Wheeler Drives Guild."

O.R. User: Guild or guilt? The guilt of messing up whatever order existed on the roads in Colombo. The police are unable to deal with the disorder the 3 wheelers create because they break unwritten rules rather than the law.

The law does not fit them because when the law was written no one expected vehicles to be able to take right angled turns or to fit into half a lane or to stand at an angle perpendicular to a line of traffic, waiting at the traffic lights, and yet travel in the same direction when the stationary line becomes mobile.

Socrates: I wish that we were able to conduct this discussion in Sinhala, to have the Three Wheeler Drivers Guild in more active participation. I have seen London taxis doing U turns on the streets of Glasgow with impunity or New York taxis spurt across an intersection at high acceleration as the light turns green.

These sights characterized one's memory of those streets. When we travelled in Madras, in a three wheeler, 4 of us and the driver sped through the midnight streets, one sharing the driver's seat.

But said the driver, "This is illegal. If I'm caught with a passenger sharing my seat, my licence will be cancelled." But Madras 3 wheeler drivers seem to be obey road rules more than their Colombo types. My American pal Kurt Facco and his wife Kayte, when in Colombo, loved 3 wheelers for their ability to get them from place to place. There is a thrill in beating the other guy to it. And the thrill of driving like a wild ass without the danger of being locked up.

Engineer Anton Nanayakkara: Member of the Committee for the Prevention of Accidents.

Three wheelers pose these questions, from my point of view. If they get into the inner lane on a two lane highway they hold up other users who are faster than them. They should be restricted to the outer lane where slower vehicles, like buses, which carry the public, normally ply.

Next they park in any available parking space and park there in lines of three wheelers, preventing other vehicles from using common parking. Road parking is there to do a job and get away but three wheelers are always there. As their numbers increase they take over more parking.

Other vehicles, whose numbers are also increasing are more excluded thereby. Parking for three wheelers, like taxi stands, should be at places, which do not interfere with other road users rights.

O.R. User: It is in places where there are no notices about parking that we drivers have to use commonsense and park or stand in a way that enables traffic.

At a junction where the roads only allow two vehicles to pass - two lane roads, they are called, one going north or west and the other going south or east - we can ease congestion by parking at least 15 yards away from the junction.

This will help traffic, moving from one road to another, to turn in and out, without causing a hold up on the road from which it came. Also it will prevent accidents by vehicles turning fast into a road, without being able to see much of what is ahead. It will give them time and space to stop or avoid the parked vehicle.

But three wheeler drivers occupy strategic positions at junctions, within the 15 yard zone, to attract passengers and make driving more hazardous.

The Municipality can establish no parking zones at every major junction within 15 yards of it to solve this problem. A fair amount of traffic congestion will be eased.

Engineer Anton Nanayakkara: Lanes are drawn on roads by drawing equidistant parallel lines. As long as vehicles travel parallel to each other, either in the same direction or in opposite directions there will not be a collision.

Curving lanes also have parallel lines even where there are curves. In a roundabout too there are lanes taking the form of parallel concentric circles as in the Horton Place roundabout.

Socrates: Curves are feminine and straight lines are masculine. the natural tendency is to cut across the curve and proceed on the basis that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points?

Is that why three wheelers, which can take 90 degree turns in one spot and proceed at a perpendicular to its original path present such a hazard? Because of the abnormality of its behaviour and the speed with which it can execute the turn and get away with it?

O.R. User: Where there are no lanes drawn yet there is an imaginary lane in the minds of the drivers, which can only accommodate one vehicle in it.

When one vehicle overtakes another it moves into another lane and returns later. Three wheelers break this assumed spatial order by moving into a gap between the real or imaginary lanes and remaining there, making a safe two lane rod into a risky 3 lane road. Or 3 wheelers occupy spaces which are meant to be empty, as in the case of spots adjacent to traffic lights, at the top of a line of waiting traffic.

Three wheelers move in and disrupt the order of the traffic line. And usurp the space of other road users like myself. Ugh!

Socrates: They are like the illegitimate sons of kings in Shakespeare's historical plays, who cannot wait in line for the succession but must usurp the throne. Like the hunchback, Richard the Second, they thirst for legitimacy as for life itself.

But when they finally receive it they throw it away with a referendum. Lets ask a new entrant to the 3 wheeler world what he thinks.

Johann de Livera of Titus Stores: The Titus three wheeler, imported from China has bigger wheels, a four stroke engine, a self starter as well as a manual starter and seats for

4, apart from the driver.

When the seats are turned up there is luggage space for a substantial volume of goods. It is a sort of cross between the three wheel tractor and the three wheel passenger vehicle. And it is shaft driven and runs on petrol.

Socrates: Perhaps you have found a vehicle suitable for the rural economy. When a land officer suggested to Mr. C.P. de Silva, the Minister of Lands in the 1960s, (whose interest in the welfare of peasant farmers in the dry zone was not limited to the political or the administrative but extended to the physical), that he, the Minister, should get a cart, with hard rubber tyres, mass produced for the bull powered economy of Polonnaruwa, the Minister retorted, "Why should colonists travel in bullock carts and not others?" But it was the 2 wheel tractor that the farmers adopted as their mainstay.

The late Ralph Peries and the late H.A. de S, Gunesekera, professors both, having gained positions in the state planning outfit in 1970, chortled with delight about the huge prospects that the 3 wheel tractor held for the rural economy. And T.B. Illangaratane, who was the creator of state trading corporations, named a big fat man as chair and short fat man as general manager to his tractor corporation. He called the big fat man "4 wheel tractor" and the short fat man "2 Wheel tractor." They were real world toys for the minister of trade.

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