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TIMES POSTCARD
Did someone say 'Temptation 2004'?
By Rajpal Abeynayake
This season they have decided to give the people some really good entertainment. Television channels have failed - - all they have in these are canned British and US soaps, and a few C grade Hollywood movies.

So lawmakers have taken over. This season they are giving it their all. The President started the dramatic trend of Box Office beating entertainment when she said that the "death penalty will be returned.'' She would have liked to add "starring S. B. Dissnayake'' but she couldn't quite get to that point - just in a technical sense.

But, just when the lawmakers thought that things are going well and they are keeping the people entertained, there was news that Shahrukh Khan was coming. Parliamentarians were not going to be upstaged by some Bollywood actor, and particularly some fellow who has to have around him a posse of bodyguards to save him from females. What kind of man had bodyguards to save him from females, said one Parliamentarian - and we are not mentioning his name for fear of a lawsuit. (Then having said that he added with a wry smile, "I take bodyguards with me only so that they can save the public from myself.'')

So the Parliamentarians have taken the law - - sorry the entertainment - - into their own hands. One newspaper noted that they are ‘harassing the mace in the House’. This was in bad form . One Parliamentarian was asked why ever they would want to harass an inanimate object? The MP replied unthinkingly “well why can't people just be happy that we are harassing inanimate objects for a change?”Meanwhile Wimal Weerawansa says that the UNP is going totally out of control in Parliament - - and if you think that he is against this idea of lawmakers providing entertainment, he will just as soon reassure you that there is nothing like that. Criticism, especially from him, is also part of the entertainment.

Weerrawansa, being interviewed on a television channel, was not asked to elaborate, but he was apparently going to say "just see how much our side was in control when the Speaker was elected." His view is that on that occasion only the carpets in the House were harassed, and also the ballot-box, both inanimate objects, far more inanimate for instance than the mace -- which proves that the UPFA knows how to go berserk while exercising the maximum control. This the UNP cannot do, he was to say, in his customary delivery that is now so well known to people that mothers can easily put their naughty sons to sleep by saying 'Wimal Weerawansa will soon be on television.''

Also, thought somebody (somebody cruel, Wimal Weerawansa would vouch for that) said that "politics is show-business for the ugly'' the Sri Lankan lawmakers are not going to be intimidated by Shahrukh Kahn Priyanka Chopra and Preity Zinta, all looking drop-dead into the camera, as if to say 'come hither', ( …and 'if you don't come hither you can drop dead wherever you are for all we care', you know, that sort of thing….) This sort of drop dead stuff is pooh-poohed by our lawmakers, who say that these Bollywood types don't know the first thing about real pathos in entertainment - - or real chutzpah. We have heard that both sides of Parliament are agreed that when S. B. Dissanayake raised both his hands while being handcuffed and smiled with all teeth available at the camera, he was showing that the real innocent-boy act in this part of the sub-continent comes not from Shahrukh Khan but from SB. Take also the President - - can Priyanka Chopra even with her drop dead stare at the camera, keep a straight face and say that Colombo is one day going to be the Garden City of Asia? No she can't - - the point is that Bollywood actresses can pout at the camera, but they can't both pout and then smile as if butter won't melt in their mouths. For that kind of thespian poise and accomplishment you need to find the name Kumarautnga on the billboards.

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