High? Our eco system?

A friend who visited Delhi after some years away reported the new, hip thing to do in Delhi clubs. Cocaine. Affluent men, women of the upper classes lazed around getting high, but it was the lax attitude about it that shocked her.

Cocaine is primarily a substance which stimulates the brain and is highly addicitve. I'll leave the pros and cons to the reader, but has anyone really thought about the supply chain and how it actually affects the eco system?

In fact, even the illegal cultivation of cocaine (AND ganja and other drugs) kills acres of rain forests in Costa Rica, protected national reserves world over, acres of the Amazon and supports violent, drug-cartel related crimes globally. In fact, Colombia being the 2nd largest producer of Coca saw its forest cover falling from 82% to 78% between 2002 to 2007 where as the drug crimes in Mexico just gets worse.

Danilo Villafañé, an Arhuaco indigenous leader in Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta who is helping his people take back lands formerly controlled by guerrillas and cultivated by commercial coca growers.
Photos by Rhett A. Butler 2010.

The implications are frankly scary, specially in a day and age where we need out living greens to at least sustain the earth as we pollute it from one end. The question is, does a drug have to cost so much?

So the next time, someone narrates me a story about getting high in Hikka and how fun it was, I'll only be thinking how misinformed that person is. That maybe being a little less ignorant where your intoxicants come from would probably take you out of a cycle that cultivates deforestation, promotes poverty/dependency and violent crime the world over.

Freedom

I'm feeling it now
This strange sense of freedom
All the weight is gone
I feel so light

Nothing has changed
and yet nothing is the same
Why does it feel so good?

I'm lucky
I'm free
All my troubles from yesterday are still with me
Yet they don't bother me

I'm in the same place I was yesterday
but everything seems so much better now
Half Full it is

Many may say success
hardwork and so many other
things are the path to freedom
But they are wrong.
Eternally striving is to be slave to something else

I don't know what this is I've written
But I am not ashamed or embarrassed.
My heart, inner soul told me to do it.
I'm listening to myself...

Suraaangani, Suraaaangani, Suranganiita Maalu Genaawaaaa! Way to go machaan! Way to go!

It’s been nearly 5 months since I made my last post in MW. Welcome, social and all the other events of the campus have just finished and finally I got some time to mingle around my PC for a longer writing episode such as THIS BRIEF POST and not to forget next it’s going to be the exam-kickoff which is going till April 23rd. oh! What a life… anyways let’s start the show.
After hearing the remix of this famous retro Bila hit, it has struck me in a different chord which compels me to write this note. It’s not just a remix of and old song which has done to cater mass market or to get some publicity. If it has … still it got a deeper meaning in the arrangement of the newer version which is put down by the contributing artists unconsciously.
The song is the mirror of what we should be as a united country in the future years to come. Because we need a fresh start, we are exhausted and tired by the 30+ years of war and now we need to look at how we are going to start the new chapter without making the same mistake our past generations made 20 years ago.
The song has trilingual touch in it and it can be accessed by everybody. Sinhalese listen to it because the melody is in their blood. Tamils too can enjoy it because the newer version’s beat is pretty much familiar Kollywood dancetrack beat frequent in the Tamil movies. It is such a catchy little tune which does much more than just entertaining, it provides the platform for both our races to enjoy ourselves without trespassing other one’s freedom. I personally feel that this is the starting point of the social cohesion among next generation of Sri Lanka.
We need a new way, a new way of expressing ourselves and getting to know others. We have to find a method, a modern one to understand other communities. So I think we have found that in music. Just need more contributions from the new generation of artists to strengthen and to wipe out stains of blood which ruined our nation’s image and the past.
Way to go machaan way to go! If we are on this track you can do much more than Delon’s false patriotism and M.I.A.’s verbal freedom fighting.