Tie brigade in a tight spot

LIVING: The decision by the Government to make the tie optional wear for public servants is bound to cause a knotty poser across the board among the country's stuffshirted bureaucracy.While the tie is given shortshrift the public sector dress code is bound to undergo a revolutionary change though dyed in the wool tie wearers may put in resistance.

Although some may deny it there has always been a hidden elitism associated with the tie although most still denigrate it as a relic of our colonial past.

The tie, over the years has come to stay as a symbol of respect and station and even survived the great cultural revolution of 1956. So much so the tie has almost become second nature to most individuals across the public/private sector divide.

Nay it is almost a cult today where even salesmen delivering groceries to stores are sporting ties even on a sweltering noon. As is often observed even a quite normal individual is wont to develop a swagger when sporting a tie and tie clad personalities brimming with self importance and spunk is more the rule than the exception.

For some, especially the old timers the tie is an integral part of their sartorial make up. These worthies nostalgically reminisce on the days when the tie held sway under the White Raj. In short the tie has come to be institutionalised in almost every field of endeavour in the current set up despite avowed partiality to by one and all to indigenous habits and cultural mores.

For all intents and purposes the tie has assumed the proportions of a sub culture among most Sri Lankans and regarded as a hallmark of the elite bastion.

Therefore any attempt to breach this fortress is not going to be taken kindly by many. For there is much to lose for the tie brigade if the idea catches on.

The fall out of this decision will initially be felt on the domestic front. There will be no more straightening tie knots accompanied by an affectionate pat on the cheek by the better half before hubby leaves for work,a typical domestic scene depicting undying family ties.

Ties will vanish from the shelves of dress marts and clothes emporia and so will tie clad salesmen at the counters. For the trend will be to move with the tide.

There will also be many ties shed especially the old school tie while bureaucrats who are wont to change ties with the change of regimes will have to think of other devices to display change in allegiance. The fate of the tie is also bound to have its own spin off.

Embossed wedding and cocktail invitations would henceforth dispense with the standard Lounge dress code and instead make the issue optional as with the Government option. For no Foreign Embassy or Banqueter would insist on a Tie/Coat get up in defiance of a Government decree. And if option is the criteria there is bound to be drastic transformations on all fronts.

Board Room meetings which previously saw Directors and shareholders togged in Western dress will now have attendees in optional wear. These may included national dress, Kurta or shalwars blending with the tie coat variety who still hold steadfastly onto their 'Traditional' dress.The carefully cultivated persona of the tie clad bureaucrat is also likely to suffer in a milieu where their peers deciding to go their own ways in their dress preferences.

There will be no more importance attached to the tie and it will also be common to see prospective employees coming for interviews san the customary tie. For sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander and no interview panel would dare allow itself to influence its collective decision on the right candidate based on his dress.

It will be interesting to see if our Politicians too would follow suit. One could only conjure up a local politico being received at the Buckingham palace sans Jacket and tie. Why not, the great Mahatma Gandhi did set a precedent.

Rambler

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A tsunami hit our coast in 1883

Malini Gowinnage

DISASTER: Tsunami was not much known a word to us Sri Lankans until December 26, 2004. Recorded as one of the most deadliest disasters in the modern history, the tsunami on this fateful day took more than 275,000 lives and played havoc in the lives of the people and destroyed property in much of the coastal areas of South and South East Asia and the east coast of South Africa caused by the world's fifth largest earthquake near the Island of Sumathra of the East Indies, it triggered the entire planet earth to vibrate at least half an inch.

Nonetheless, 2004 was not the first instance when Sri Lanka experienced the effects of a tsunami.

A tsunami washed away the North-East and southern coastal areas of the country on August 27, 1883.

This incident is documented in a book titled Krakatoa (Krakatau) - the day, the world exploded August 27, 1883, written by Simon Winchester one of the best selling authors of America.

The writer cites The Ceylon Observer on August 27, which reported the incident.

".... an extraordinary occurrence was witnessed at the wharf at about 1.30 p.m. today. The sea receded as far as the landing stage on the jetty. The boats and canoes moored along the shore were left high and dry for about three minutes. A great number of prawns and fishes were taken up by the coolies and stragglers about the place before the water returned."

The tsunami, which killed nearly 40,000 in Indonesia was caused by an eruption of Krakatoa (Krakatau), the volcano island which was in the Sundae straight between the islands of Java and Sumatra.

The book says: The old Dutch Port of Galle, close to the southern tip of the island of Ceylon, is where the arrival of these short waves - or more precisely, a sequence of fourteen waves each separated by just a few minutes was first noticed.

One woman was killed caught up in the waves. The woman was carrying a sheaf of paddy from the fields when she was caught up in the influx of water and was carried away. The woman died from the injuries she sustained in falling. She is the most distant casualty of the eruption of the volcano.

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Don Juan in Hollywood

Carl Muller

LIFE: When I was young, I simply had to see "Zorba the Greek" and "African Queen" - both at the Savoy, and oh, of course, "Lust for Life". I was quite dazzled by Anthony Quinn, the Hollywood star who died almost five years ago. In him, I saw a rough, primal sort of man, raw and lusty with a throaty voice and a stubble he never seemed to take a razor to.

A "to-hell-with-it" sort of person hardly meant to be a star - but when he played Gauguin, the French painter in "Lust for Life" he took away an Oscar although he only appeared on screen for six minutes!

It was the role of Zorba that made his an international superstar and it soon seemed that he would have to play the part of Zorba the Italian, Zorba the Romanian, Zorba the Mexican. Once or twice he was asked to play Zorba the American-Greek and there were even plans for Zorba the Arab! Quinn even gave the latter much thought because he had carried off his role as a Bedouin tribesman to perfection in "Lawrence of Arabia."

That was his trick: He could become anyone he wanted to be. In an old film magazine I once read how he appeared for the auditioning of "The Plainsman" and spoke streams of gibberish. It convinced the casting director that Quinn was an authentic native-American.

He was given the part of a Cheyenne Indian. His performance delighted Cecil B. de Mille and thereafter Quinn assumed the character and ways of any person he had to act as. He was a sheikh in "The Road to Morocco," a Filipino guerilla in "Back to Bataan", an Inuit Eskimo in "The Savage Innocents."

He even claimed to have invented Zorba's famous leg-sliding dance.

As it was later known, he had broken his foot the day before shooting began, but found that he could drag his foot along without much pain. He had to perform a traditional Greek dance, so he first held out his arms, then began to move, dragging his injured foot in the sand - and the other dancers did what he was doing and Zorba's dance was made!

But even to watch him on screen was fascinating. He knew how to stir his viewers. It was as though he forced too much life on you, had no wish to be subtle, ambiguous or polite... and he did have much South American Indian blood in him. His mother was of Aztec ancestry; his father, an Irishman, died when he was only nine.

Quinn married Cecil B. de Mille's adopted daughter, Katherine, but did what he pleased with his marriage. His infidelities saw him bedding some of Hollywood's most glamorous women: Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Carole Lombard, Ingrid Bergman and Greta Garbo, all five who each bore him a child. He fathered eight sons and four daughters and amazed even the tabloids by becoming a father of his last two children when he was in his eighties! The mother was 50 years Quinn's junior.

This brings me to an interesting point. Nobody in Hollywood paid much attention even when Ingrid Bergman came out of Quinn's bed to play the nun in "The Bells of St. Mary's. Real life was one thing, screen life another. However full of muck their real lives were, they still became "others" of star quality on screen. Audiences around the world swarmed the theatres to see "The Bells of St Mary's".

I was taken to see it at the Plaza, Wellawatte, when I was a boy, and I remember how the parish priest arranged for the entire Sunday School to be taken to see it. And no, not one good Catholic said Bergman was a Hollywood whore in a nun's habit!

Quinn died in 2001. We lost a man who rose to stardom from being a cement mixer, a boxer, a foreman in a mattress factory and, when he was 14, a supervisor of 150 women and girls on an apricot farm. Who knows? The mattresses and apricots may have made him what he was!