5th Column
It’s ice bucket, stupid!
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My Dear ‘Ice Bucket’ victims,
I thought I must write to you when I heard that you are being showered with buckets of ice water, for the worthy cause of raising money for research on a rare disease. They tell me that all this originated in America and has spread all over the world through social media.
So far, some of our celebrity cricketers and a few politicians have become willing victims of the ‘ice bucket’. It also seems fashionable to invite others to participate. No one is spared, it seems, because even Mahinda maama has been asked to take up this ‘ice bucket’ challenge.
Don’t get me wrong, but I am a bit puzzled by all this fuss about raising funds for research done in America for a disease that is rarely found in our country. Raising money for research on any illness is a noble cause, but should we get so excited about this and have we got our priorities correct, I wonder.
Now, if we are really interested in raising money for research, aren’t there enough diseases that should take priority over a rare disease that is being researched in America? Don’t we have health problems of our own for which our celebrities can take up an ‘ice bucket’ challenge?
For example, don’t we hear of people pleading for kidneys every day? Although there has been some research into finding out the causes for our kidney diseases, no one has found a satisfactory answer yet. So, why don’t we think of raising money for this research, instead of trying to be fashionable?
Then, even after so many years of educating the public about dengue, we haven’t been able to get rid of this deadly disease and lives — mostly of children — are still being lost. So, for us Sri Lankans, shouldn’t finding money for research on Dengue be more important?
Then we have poor Maithri struggling to fight against the tobacco industry. He is having difficulty in trying to place a simple advertisement on a cigarette packet that informs the public that smoking is harmful and that it has the potential to kill people.
Surely, we should consider it more important to raise money to fight the legal battles Maithri has waged against the tobacco industry in this country, shouldn’t we? I am sure it will save more lives than raising funds for research on a rare disease in America!
Or is it that, raising funds to fight kidney disease, dengue or the tobacco industry is not fashionable enough? After all, we won’t find Bill Gates or George Bush showering themselves with ice cold water for research on Dengue or kidney disease in faraway Sri Lanka!
Surprisingly though, there have been a few people who have seen through this ‘ice bucket’ racket and called it for what it is. It is not every day that I agree with Avamangala but he is one of the few people who has dared to disagree with the ‘ice bucket’ trend sweeping the country-and has said as much.
More surprisingly, even Mervyn has declined the challenge saying it is a waste of water. I suspect though that this must be as a result of a bitter experience in the past: we all remember how he was showered with a bucket of red paint and how that was shown on live television, don’t we?
That said, for most of our politicians who constantly sling mud at each other, one ‘ice bucket’ will not be sufficient to make them appear clean in the eyes of the public. Nevertheless, that may be the reason why they are so eager to take up this challenge, so they could appear to be very clean and pure.
Of course, there are also some politicians who do deserve an ‘ice bucket’ to wake them up from their long slumber. I am thinking of those in the Green camp but then, I am quite certain one ‘ice bucket’ will not be enough for them; even dozens may not do trick, if the past few years are anything to go by.
Therefore I hope that all you would be ‘victims’ of the ‘ice bucket’ would think twice before taking up this so-called challenge. I am sure it is for a good cause, but there are other causes closer to home which deserve our attention even more, though they may not be as fashionable!
Yours truly,
Punchi Putha
PS: This is not to say that we shouldn’t sometimes follow what the Americans do. Remember how their embassy here issued statement after statement about the incidents at Aluthgama? Now, we should follow that example and our embassy in Washington should start issuing statement after statement about the race riots in a place called Ferguson and advise them about protecting the rights of minorities. I wonder what Aunty Sison and Uncle Obama would say to that?