Columns

Pre-revolution France is noted for an infamous saying attributed to its last Queen, Marie Antoinette. Who was around to record it or actually heard the words nobody really knows.

If the irascible President Trump had a say in it he would he would call it fake news and blame some quizzical journalist for creating this saying.

There was no Rajan Ramanayake around to put the words-genuine or concocted- into play back mode. Had there been a French Ramanayake in those 18th century days, why we might still be enjoying many sayings and doings in an ostentatious French Royal Palace or among the courtiers.

But then beggars cannot be choosers as they say.

Still one might remember that many who thought they were invincible, were born to rule and the lesser people their slaves, lost their heads. Actually many had lost their heads several years earlier as they enjoyed their cheeses and champagnes which is not a bad way to spend your time with nothing on their hands and less in their minds.

After all what have rulers to do except rule over others and sing “kapalla-beepalla, jolly karapalla ” while driving the innocent to their bitter end.

I doubt the French were in quite a singing mood as tumbrils rolled towards the guillotines working overtime. Marie Antoinette lost her head because she was too haughty and never really understood the sufferings of the Parisian citizenry.

When told that the people had no bread, she told them to eat cake. That would have been fine, no doubt, if there was cake and the populace had the wherewithal to patronize the nearby patisserie.  Whether it was her haughtiness or her sheer ignorance of the dire lives of the common people, the consequences were the same.

But why go back to the days of the French Revolution when many people are today undergoing hardships having fallen victim to the pledges of prospective rulers who promised the great and the good but can hardly provide parippu.

Okay, okay Britain is not a nation of parippu eaters. But today you have to scour the country and send Long Range Reconaissance Patrols deep into Indian territory like Wembley, Southall or Tooting or the curry houses in Brick Lane now known as Banglatown, to track down a couple of kilos of this all so popular lentil.

Who really cares for the sufferings of the poor, especially the daily wage earners, as long as those who wield power and to whom power is delegated and their Colombo glitterati not only have the cakes but eat them too.

At least it might be argued that Marie Antoinette had little or no knowledge of the life of the common people. After all, she did not need their vote unlike present-day leaders in many places who assiduously seek it to come to power and then kick the ladder they used to get to the top.

The coronavirus or Covid-19 has exposed the weaknesses, failings, frailties and selfishness of many who are in the seats of power and those who have been deposited in lesser seats in many countries Covid-19 has struck.

Before I sat down to write this I had seen many images in various news outlets,  ‘social’ media and others sent to me of street scenes during a break in the curfew in Sri Lanka.

I had also seen on international television scenes in other countries as the common people often without basic amenities tried to deal with life under terrible and worsening conditions brought on by Corona and the reactions of rulers to this new deadly menace.

Naturally I was more concerned with the reactions of normal people to conditions in Sri Lanka as the government tried to grapple with this unexpected and vicious virus that has seemingly taken over the country or parts of it.

The images of the Sri Lankan scene showed both chaos and orderliness. The comments that followed the erratic thinking in government circles which made even that short break after a 60-hour curfew appear so much ad hocery.

Who are the “wunder kinder”, as the Germans might say, who made a mess of the curfew- free hours, first announcing an eight-hour break, then reducing it to six  then announcing a return to the status quo?

Here were people, many without stocks of food at home to live through those 60 hours were waiting for this curfew break to grab whatever they could to add something to fast emptying larders not knowing when they would have next opportunity before some master mind came up with more bright ideas.

I heard that many of them had planned ahead which store they would go to, what time they would leave home and how they would do so. All this was based on the assumption that there would be an 8-hour break as previously announced.

Much pre-planning went awry when the break was cut by two-hours which was crunch time for a people in search of food, fuel, gas and what else were needed.

Then apparently it became a problem of how many to deploy, a platoon or a battalion, so to say. All that was useless, of course, as wending queues stretched a kilometre or more at some points as they stood patiently moving inch- by- inch to fast emptying perishables in supermarkets, as one writer said.

Elsewhere in municipal markets and street-side shops people struggled and even engaged in some pushing and shoving as time ran out but they stood hoping against hope that they would not be chased away for violating the curfew.

There were pictures of winding queues even outside pharmacies. It seems nobody thought that citizens of an ageing population would not have to buy most of their medicines which a free medical system does not or cannot always provide.

Now did not those wunder kinder realise that there are patients who need drugs for their survival. If not, at least they should they read or listen to what affected people have to say.

This is not the time to play a modern-day Marie Antoinette and then don the mantle of a Florence Nightingale.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor, Diplomatic Editor and Political Columnist of the Hong Kong Standard before moving to London where he joined Gemini News Service. Later he was Sri Lanka’s Deputy-in-Chief in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London. )