• Chinese healing and shady deals
  Chinese medical clinics have caught on like a disease in Sri Lanka, particularly in the cities. Anyone who is anyone today takes their ailments to these clinics. And although statistics were not immediately available (as those who are responsible for keeping such records said they would have to delve into numerous files to trace them, and ‘what a bother’) it is guessed that many street corners have one. Given the volume of advertisements appearing in the press, there are a large number of them making a lucrative business out of health in Sri Lanka.
• The Language Lobby
  Two poets - the faces of a Lankan oneness
• A junior remembers
• 

They tell us they can make our sinus problems vanish, grace to a few hair-thin needles inserted into the right places. They promise to make our warts, pimples and patches disappear before our very eyes. Most of them swear by bell, book and candle to give us an hourglass figure within days: no exercise, just age-old Chinese herbs and a few Chinese massages combined with some other Chinese whatnots. The same items that could, as they have it, transform an impotent male almost overnight into an outstanding success with the opposite sex. And all of them maintain that nothing they prescribe leads to side effects, harmful or otherwise.

These modest confessions are seemingly all we - a gullible metropolitan Sri Lankan population fast becoming obsessed with weight loss and eradication of pimples - need to get us on our feet and at their doors, pronto.

Chinese medical clinics have caught on like a disease in Sri Lanka, particularly in the cities. Anyone who is anyone today takes their ailments to these clinics. And although statistics were not immediately available (as those who are responsible for keeping such records said they would have to delve into numerous files to trace them, and ‘what a bother’) it is guessed that many street corners have one. Given the volume of advertisements appearing in the press, there are a large number of them making a lucrative business out of health in Sri Lanka.

But how many of them offer the ‘real thing,’ so as to speak? How do we know that a man who professes to be an acupuncture expert is actually what he claims to be? And how do we know what goes into those pills they offer our health/weight-conscious public?

Apparently, we don’t know - and neither is there any mechanism in place to enable the monitoring of Chinese medical clinics. A search through available monitoring bodies in the local health scene revealed that nobody is responsible for keeping a check on the medical practices of the clinics. Neither the Ayurvedic Medical Council, the Homeopathic Council nor the Drugs Regulatory Authority or Cosmetics Devices Drugs Authority, etc., has it within the realm of their duties. Or if anyone does, they are not admitting it.

The Board of Investment (BOI) is directly responsible for approving the setting up of these clinics, in Sri Lanka. This, as its officials informed us, was because of the investment element involved and approval is issued after reference to the Indigenous Ministry (according to the officials, though this could not immediately be confirmed from the Ministry). The clinics get their ‘O.K’ under Section 16 of the Board of Investment Law and are governed by the normal law of the country. After obtaining the go-ahead, they register as businesses and start operations under “certain conditions” set down by the BOI. The approval is renewed annually on the fulfillment of certain conditions.

“The policy of the governmnent is to encourage investment. Therefore, when a foreign party asks approval to invest in a business here, we cannot turn them away just because they wish to set up a Chinese medical clinic and such clinics now have a bad reputation here,” explained a senior manager at the BOI.

Bad reputation? What bad reputation?

According to senior BOI officials, the BOI has now termporarily suspended the granting of approval for the setting up of Chinese medical clinics because of “numerous complaints against them, such as the ones the newspapers are investigating into at present” (hint, hint). The BOI has also requested clinics to remove the ‘BOI-Approved’ label many of them paste on their sign boards. While the approval of existing clinics are renewed, no new clinics are given the green light.

A BOI official who asked not to be named said, “Many of the so-called Chinese doctors are up to no good. They are simply aiming at obtaining the residence visas and promptly conduct other businesses under the guise of running a medical centre”.

“Other businesses” turned out to be prostitution, smuggling, and shady activities of the like that nobody seemed willing to put a name to.

The same official quoted an instance whereby he had visited a clinic in Narahenpita on three occasions and on each was told “the doctor is out”. Doctor was out, he said, but there were any number of beautiful Chinese women who were willing to offer their services. Another explained that the all-important residence visa meant that Chinese ‘doctors’ could get down Chinese nationals on the pretence of recruiting medical staff and then send them elsewhere, using Sri Lanka as a transit point.

Other BOI officials were on the defensive when questioned as to why on earth they do not investigate the activities of those they had given approval to. “They come under the normal law of the country,” said Mr. John Silva of its Monitoring Department, “The law-keeping agencies of the country must deal with them”. He did say, however, that if any member of the public has a complaint against a clinic, the Monitoring Department would be more than glad to investigate and take appropriate action.

Mr. Silva was questioned as to whether the Monitoring Department did not concern themselves with the activities of so-called medical clinics at least when approval renewal time came along once a year. He said they did. Had the BOI, then, cancelled approvals of any clinics on the basis of complaints against them or results of any monitoring? He replied again in the affirmative, although a little nonchalantly: “Yes, there have been instances”. How many? “I can’t say offhand,” he supplied promptly.

A Chinese medic who himself has a fairly strong reputation in the city and seemed to be as genuine as they get, said that there are “enough and more” shady goings-ons where Chinese medical clinics are concerned. And what’s more intriguing: “The BOI knows,” he said, “They know. Immigration also knows. But they don’t do nothing. I don’t know why”.

He maintained that both the Monitoring Department officials and Immigration officials visit clinics (they visited him, he said) to ‘investigate’ if their documents were in place. Asked his opinion as to why they do not “do anything”, he said, “Maybe they can’t. Maybe they (the clinics) know important people”. The BOI, of course, denied any such ‘prepostorous’ thing. In the end, one thing was clear: most people knew what (if anything) was going on but none apparently made constructive use of their powers to stop it.

Admittedly, there are (or appear) to be genuine Chinese medics, in posession of endorsed documents showing the embossed seal of the Chinese government, practising their trade in Sri Lanka. Of course,without regulatory mechanism in place, it is difficult to judge who is genuine and who is not. But mentioning irregularities in the case of some is not to arouse suspicion about others or to say that all ought to be tarred with the same brush.

For the sake of quoting an example, Dr. Chu of the Chinese Eastern Hospital at Barnes Place when questioned about his credibility displayed a set of documents certifying that he has qualifications from recognised medical colleges in China. Among these was a booklet issued by the Chinese goverment endorsing that he was a doctor practising his trade. Each of his staff, too, were certified and approved doctors or nurses.

Dr. Chu professed to using “Chinese traditional acupuncture” for weight reduction, as well as herbal treatment (liquids massaged into “fatty places”) combined with the use of a “special instrument” to speed absorption of the liquids. This, he called “fat burning therapy”. He also treated arthritis and diabetic patients and those with a host of other ailments. When asked if any institution had conducted clinical tests to prove that the pills and liquids he administered were effective, Dr. Chu noted that the factory that manufactured the herbs had done so. However, he admitted that he was not inclined or bound to tell any local health authority the contents or efficacy of his medicines.

A female patient who had followed a course of acupuncture at the clinic said she had found it to be successful in reducing her weight. She said she had tried gyms and fitness centres and got no relief. “I was 177 pounds,” she said, “Now I am 53 pounds! All my friends ask me what has happened to me. I lost 25 to 30 pounds in three to four months!” she marvelled.

In addition to acupuncture, Dr. Chu administered pills to his patient. When questioned as to whether she knew what the pills he gave her constituted of, she shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, “Whatever he gives, I take. Doctor gives, I take!” Which brings us to the crux of the problem at hand - how do we know what they give us, and does anybody care?

The alarming fact, as pointed out by some professionals in the medical field, is that the people who avail themselves of the services of Chinese medical clinics are themselves not concerned about what they swallow - so long as it has the desired results. All patients questioned at various clinics said they did not know what the doctor was giving them - just that they were “traditional Chinese herbal medicines”. Neither were they gasping to know whether the drugs were clinically tested or whether they would have side effects in the long run. The short term was what mattered.

Many local health professionals say this is not enough. The public must be discerning where their health in concerned. Consultant to the Drugs Regulatory Authority, Dr. Nanda Amarasekera, noted that it is vital for the government to set up some sort of monitoring body, and one that would test the drugs and isolate its components as well as test efficacy.. “As it stands, we don’t know what they are selling - whether the drugs are addictive, efficient, or of what quality they are and how safe they are,” he said, “Anyone is free to sell them”.

As far as the public is concerned, the questions must be asked. It is, after all, their health that is on the platter. It is no longer sufficient to choose a doctor when browsing through the newspaper; neither is it wise to be taken in and bowled over by the words “traditional Chinese medicine” or “herbs”. It is rather more important to ask, “How can we tell?”

Michael Ondaatjie and Rienzie Cruz. Let's put aside all the jazz that rose in triumphant waves of sound, all the fanfare, the glamour, the glitz of "The English patient" and who ran best in the family. Did you know that Michael is a past winner of the University of Western Ontario President's Medal for poetry and that one of his books of poetry was "The Man with Seven Toes"?

And what of Rienzie, who is reference librarian at the University of Waterloo? He's publishing widely in Canadian and American literary periodicals such as "The Canadian Forum" and "Marahat Review".

Not long ago, John Blaike wrote these lines on hearing a poet read from his own works:

It's easy to write a poem
when you can begin
with a line like
it's easy to write a poem.

I feel, in considering our two Canadian Lankans, that Michael finds it easy. Things are more classically tuned where Rienzie is concerned and that's not so easy. I've been considering the poetry of both and, somehow, I found an outspoken effervescence in Michael and a serious, carefully picked and well-juggled imagery in Rienzie. Both do their stuff and do it well of course, but a look at their work helps one to draw swift sketches of each of them. Michael, full of force and that box-office magnetism and a keen sense of where exactly the gallery is and how he should play to it. Rienzie, with no pretensions whatsoever, considering the craftsmanship he brings to his work, a bit of a worry bag over his lines, chopping, suturing, snipping, distilling his every mind-urge to arrive at a creative gem that still needs buffing. What we have is a sort of spontaneous combustion from one, the warm glow of old gold from the other.

Me? I have not seen such a heady difference in approach, style or even choice of mood and subject and it interests me to offer my readers this wonderful sense of see-saw-up-and-down between two of our most eminent writers who still hold a soft corner in their hearts for this, their native land.

Somehow, the softer corner seems to be Rienzie's. One reads the longing in his lines. To him, as Ashley Halpe pointed out in a recent paper, "Travel and Travail", the wrench had been quite sore and the memories of palms and frangipani burned deep. To Michael, I think, it was all more matter-of-fact. Not that I am telling of insensitivity, but, as I said, it was get-up-and-go and things to do; no time for dawdling in the past when the roller coaster of a new and unrelenting life had to be ridden. Of course, Sri Lanka tugged, if only to record the best of the old days with its moonlight swims and madcap aunts, and that was a past he had to return to recapture, with some justified exaggeration, and record with best.

If I had to compare, I would put Michael and Rienzie on a beach. Michael would see the rocking lights of tankers and the long purple swell and his will be a story of life and love and intrigue in an Atlantic setting. Rienzie will place a sea shell to his ear and listen to the music of the tropics and dream of home.

I would like to give you Rienzie's "Immigrant" - surely his own story of that wrenching away at forty his coming to Canada where he will no longer be a "clown in the carnival of the sun".

At forty,
the bone had set hard as stone,
the belly conditioned
to a chemistry of rice,
curry and strong tea;
my love for Vilma,
and my hatred for John
basked naked like stone pillars
in my courtyard;
lesser likes and dislikes
burgeoned
as wild lillies and weeds,
and I could pluck them out at will
with my bare hands.
All this in Ceylon,
where the sun burned to a passion
on my tame skin.

That's when I decided
to come to Canada.
Soon the snow covered all:
my Vilma, my John, my lillies, my weeds;
a film of ice spun round my skin,
my fires sputtered to a white wind,
and died
with a curse on their jaws:
gloves, snow-boots, ear-muffs,
now preached angrily of the death of the sun.

But somewhere,
in my forty-year blood-stream,
in the roots of my crow hair,
in the sunned joints of my limbs,
lurked leopards on green trees,
elephants trumpeting night's violence,
Vilma and John struggling in their shadows,
wild lillies and weeds straining
their thin bones
against a crust of ice,
waiting to break loose.
For the time being, perhaps,
no one will know my real name,
or guess
where I really come from;
who'll ever know
that I was once a clown
in the carnival of the sun,
when I now live
without my loves or hates,
wild lillies or weeds,
only the passion
of the unsaid word,
the white silence
of civilisation.

As I said, Michael took to Canada with his own flask of gin and orange juice. He had to immerse himself, become one with the land, the culture, the face of the West, and then, with will and skill, rise above it all to stand out, show the West that he had come, seen, surpassed. There is this determination and gusto in his work and, above all, that need to be looked upon as the all-West man who can out-West the West. He had the knack, the genius, actually, of becoming one with the vast, chequered fabric around him. Came the time of the re-make of "King Kong" all Technicolor and monster-y as only Hollywood could re-make it. Let's look at his poem, "King Kong".

In the yellow dust
'of the light of the National Guard
he perishes magnanimous
'tearing the world apart.
He pitches his balls accidentally
through a 14th storey window,
gets a blow job
from the vacuum left by jets.

Up there, our lady in his fingers
like a ring, so delicate
he must swallow what he loves,
caressing with wounds
we who reach for him.

Then through the suburbs.
Impregnated the kitchen staff
of the Trade Winds motel,
devoured half a Loblaws supermarket,
threw a Vic Tanney gymnasium around.
Last seen in Chicago, with helicopters
cutting into his head like thorns.

So we renew him
capable, in the zoo of night.

You see what I'm driving at? If you did not know that Michael wrote this, who would you say did? Can you see how easily he slips into the city around him, the Trade Winds motel, the Vic Tanney gymnasium, the 14th storey window. Would Rienzie have considered a 14th storey window? What would you say? That Michael belongs and Rienzie doesn't? Rather would Rienzie remember even with a pang, and give us his wonderful poem

"From a Fisherman's Log-book":

Cruel
with a welt of ancient pain,
sea-blood on his big fists,
he returns,
one eye gunning with telescopic sight:

As the sun
digs its sleeping hole in the sea;
and Negombo's sun-burnt beach
crouches
before a loined black shape.

Hunched rocks
crack
and snap their rooted chains,
palms stiffen,
and the wind from the hot land
strangles its breath
in the far whining coral reef.

The gullgrows
raven,
and a crab limps backwards into its grave;
fins sprout
like sea-weed ghosts,
from the black catamaran's mouth,
as the giant Talapath thrashes
its gasping gills on the sand
and slumps
with a fisherman's eye
between its saw teeth.

And the sea-lungs
burst
through their whale-bone ribs
and cry: Ahimsa, Ahimsa, Ahimsa!

Juanis,
the one-eyed fisherman,
had come back
to the sea.

What we see between these two marvellous writers is modernity and a sort of anti-modernity. Yet, together they give tothe world a telling reminder of the true Sri Lankan spirit that can be as a sponge, absorbing all, and yet, when the water is wrung out, a sponge that is surely "made in Sri Lanka". A truth that one cannot and the other will not efface. Rienzie remains true to the home he still loves exceedingly. His sleep is of this land. His dreams remain here, his life,even in the "white silence of civilisation" is still spent where the "ribs of the jungle vine crack to the elephant's trumpet". Here is his "King of the Chena", which is so marvellously true of the scarecrow in the burnt forest patch:

He is king
But he has, infact,
No fears to embrace,
No muscles to twitch,
No blood to sweat,
No kingdom to lose,
No gods to cry to;
Bloodless,
Souless,
Man-made
He rules with the stillness
Of a Buddha.
His regalia
is of soiled white Irish linen,
Straw hat and clowning face
Sitting loosely on crucified arms.
he looks the wind in the eye
And basks, like a pukka-sahib,
In the noon-day sun.

The raven freezes
To his jocular face,
And flies the idiot vision
As from the searching hawk
At night, dark shadows
Press tight against his ribs
But veins of golden straw
Threaded to a clowning heart
Leave him pulseless,
Lethargic as wet stone.

When leaves tremble,
And ribs of jungle vine crack
To the elephant's trumpet,
His kingdom rocks,
But he stands his ground
And listens with burst eardrums
To the crying forest,
And turns a glazed eye-ball
To the frightened trees.

At dawn, the farmer returns
To his chena
Totend h\is festering seed,
And pay homage
To his king.
he smiles
At his own peaceful strategems.

Perhaps you relate to Michael. He gives us that new look at the new world with all its giddy ups and downs, divorce and those urban peccadillos, the rat-race, the obstreperous kids and the need, nay, the compulsion of the Asian to "live with a neutrality so great, I'd have nothing to think of, just to sense and kill it in my mind". Look at his "Billboards":

My wife's problems with previous
husbands, houses,
her children that I meet
at stations in Kingston, in Toronto, in London, Ontario
- they come down the grey steps
bright as actors after their drugged four-hour ride
of spilled orange juice and comics
(when will they produce a gun and shoot me
at Union Station by Gate 4?).

Reunions for Easter egg hunts
kite flying, Christmasses.
They descend on my shoulders every holiday
All this, I was about to say,
disturbs, invades my virgin past.

When she lay breeding, beginning
this anthology of kids
I moved - blind but senses
jutting faux pas, terrible humour,
shifted with a sea of persons,
breaking when necessary'into smaller self-sufficient bits of mercury.

My mind a carefully empty diary
'till I hit the barrier reef
that was my wife -
there
the right bright fish
on the peripheries of coral.
With her came the locusts of her history -
Innuendos she had missed
varied attempts at seduction (even rape)
dogs who had been bred,
and killed by taxis and brain disease.
Numerous problems I was unequal to.

Here was I trying to live
with a neutrality so great
I'd have nothing to think of,
just to sense
and kill it in my mind.

Nowadays I somehow get the feeling
I'm in a complex situation,
one of several billboard posters
blending in the rain.
I am writing this with a pen my wife had used
to write a letter to her first husband.

On it is the smell of her hair.
She must have placed it down between sentences
and thought,and driven her fingers round her skull
gathered the slightest smell of her head,
and brought it back to the pen.

I hope you have seen, as I did, the essential differences that have yet given to these writers that great Sri Lankan "oneness". Michael may have succeeded in "killing in his mind" the obsessions and compulsions of the West. Perhaps in doing so he has invested in himself an allness among all. Rienzie, on the other hand, has not been able to do so. He keeps drifting back, drawing the Lankan curtain over it all whenever the domineering dance of the West turns togrotesque for his fine-honed Lankan mind. So one kills, the other blanks it out. And thus do they remain themselves and for this we must be truly grateful, for surely are they one - so different, yet so much one in that beautiful Lankan oneness!

One rainy evening twenty five years ago I went with my friend Bandula Jayasinghe, Attorney-at-Law, to a sprawling house situated at Uyana Road, Moratuwa. We did not enter through the main door but entered a portico by the side on which was a board stating "office". We rang the bell and waited. About five minutes later the door opened and an imposing personality emerged. He greeted Bandula cordially and I was introduced to him. This was my first meeting with Mr. Eardley Perera, Advocate. Bandula then informed him that I wished to apprentice with the great man. Mr. Eardley Perera then asked me to come to his chambers on Sunday morning, this was the beginning of a long and eventful association.

Up to this time I had never seen Mr. Eardley Perera, but having heard so much of the Advocate I was determined to devil under him. Mr. Eardley Perera was then at the height of his career. Every Sunday morning his consultations with his clients was something that I came to look forward to with pleasure. I had come to learn, but he never taught us except by example and by his witty conversation. Little things that we learnt from him were the most important, how to behave in Court, and how to address Judges, Court craft and many other essential skills of a lawyer were learnt at his feet as it were. He had a profound knowledge of the Law but this knowledge lay upon him highly, I rarely saw him with a heap of law books, but a profound knowledge of the fundamentals, and a pragmatism born from a keen insight into human nature were his forte and his success. A brilliant lawyer, richly endowed with a voice equal to his skill, the focus of his mind was always on the case and never on the client, he would advise us to do the case to the best of our ability and then forget it, whatever the result. This objectivity is an essential characteristic for any good lawyer, the ability to take another man's problem to his shoulder and yet not allow it to affect one's ulcers. His vast outstation-practise gave me the chance to travel with him very often, sitting in the back seat, sharing his cigarettes, and listening to his conversation was the most educative of experiences. His stories of lawyers and the law, of his travels abroad, his anecdotes on men and matters were the most enlightening sessions that I have ever had the glad opportunity of enjoying. His conversation, never boastful, was in itself an education. Ever the liberal, he scorned race, caste or creed in his association with men. I know of none to whom I owe so much.

His personality drew people to him, in Court, or at any gathering I never saw him alone, since people tended to gather around him. Obviously, he may have disliked some people, but in my many years of association I have never heard him utter anything unkind about anyone. He introduced me to the rich and famous but always as an equal and with undeserving praise. We were the envy of the other juniors as everyone knew that he was the most generous of paymasters. Often, I was embarrassed with myself, wondering why I should be paid so much, for having done so little.

After the Sunday morning consultations many of us were asked to stay to lunch. This was indeed a grand affair, after many glasses of the best Scotch we were invited to an overwhelming table. Here along with his good wife Shirley, we became a family; and what with Jane his old retainer busily moving from the kitchen to the table with another breast of chicken or a leg of pork.

A devout Catholic, his house was known to all the vagrant train of Moratuwa, young and old, monks and beggars, padres and fishermen, clerks and conmen all benefited from his generosity. Actually, a pile of notes and coins were kept on a table along with the bottle of whiskey, to be handed out to anyone who came by. One day Mr. Upali Gooneratne had the misfortune of having a hole in his pocket, he therefore kept his spare coins on the table only to see young Vijith (Eardley's son) distribute it to the beggars. Upali saw his money diminishing and at last had to intervene to save his bus fare. Eardley Perera P.C. had friends from all walks of life, Moratuwa was his home and all it's citizens, his friends. His nonchalant spirit also, unwittingly made him a refuge to many rascals.

He enjoyed an enviable family life, his wife Shirley and the children would often join us and the affable conversation would often go on for hours. Never the prude, Eardley Perera was a friend to his children and they sometimes discussed bedroom topics with a blithe insouciance. Anyone visiting would think we were his friends and not his juniors. I am sure everyone of us felt we could discuss anything with him, and probably also thought, we could get away with anything, because we were his juniors. He held his pen in a funny sought of way and many a star crazed junior secretly tried to imitate the style.

Inspite of his wealth and reputation he was a simple man, one day he had misplaced his spectacles, so he promptly borrowed Jane's his domestic help. Superciliousness was quite alien to him and I never saw him putting on airs either with us or with others. His temperament was a happy one and I cannot remember if I ever saw him angry, Jokes came easily off his lips. Yet he could be stern with clients, especially the high and mighty who often had to come to him. On one occasion I remember a very high official in government who had come for his advice was talking in a bombastic manner and Eardley told him that he was not the Head of such and such a Ministry, "here, you are an accused in a bribery case!" he said. That put the man immediately in his place.

Writing on a personal note, I have not met a gentleman more deserving of imitation; sincere to his friends and associates, generous and kind, I only hope, that some at least of his qualities have rubbed off on me. Sadly, life requires us to grow up and take up our own responsibilities, and have juniors of our own, and yet, he remains for me, a friend, philosopher and guide.

Dear Sir, may you be well and happy, and may you long be with us.