Ignorance is bliss
Since October 2011 (the month I joined the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo), we have been going on for pickets, protests, silent pickets, candle light vigils, public awareness campaigns, signature collecting events against an illegal institution (SAITM should not be called an institution but a business venture). We have walked to University Grants Commission, Ministry of Higher Education, Ministry of Health, Sri Lanka Medical Council, Presidential secretariat, President's house, and parliament. I am not sure whether there are any other places where we could have walked to make our pleas heard. Our voices fell on deaf ears both of the rulers and the ruled. Our peaceful protests were returned first with water cannon, then with tear gas and currently with lathi-charge. I pray that days of rubber bullets followed by real bullets and bombs will not come. Us and our protests were labelled with various terms including radicals, political parties, disruptors. Soon we will be tagged as terrorists too. They will first label us and reduce us to these labels disregarding all that is good in us and our ideologies. Then they start attacking/ discriminating. I have seen that happening in our country for the past 30 years and I have suffered through these labels within the faculty too.
Why do we care about an illegal business while none seems to care about? What is wrong with us? Can't we care about our academics and careers only without worrying about what happens to other people's right to health or education?
One person known to me told that doctors are more selfish than people from other employments/ professions. Yet they are ignoring what we as medical students have sacrificed from our careers and education to protest against an illegal business.
This is for my juniors, I salute you all for the sacrifices you have made for this struggle and the guilt that it is our batch that just missed the strike period and you all had to suffer through this, though the problem started for a long time and we did not do enough when we were there as medical students to end it will burn us for the lifetime. Your boycott from the academic activities have created a much wider discussion and impact, though whatever many "learned" people around you may say. It made our lecturers to release press release and express their stance, GMOA to have several one day strikes (though they are too selfish to do a continuous strike or a private practice strike) and the government to propose some solutions (though they are shit). But now I feel it is going nowhere and again we are starting to stagnate like the years before and the losses you are making is far more than whatever this shameless society is going to get by your success. And it is high time we find a recourse balancing the pros and cons.
There will a time come when all of this education system and health system belonging to the private sector and they would be prioritizing money first before everything and people will not have an effective public education/ health institute to turn to. By that time, what we did in the past 5 years would have been distant memories but we would be proud that we fought against it and the foolish society did not realize it.
Indeed ignorance is bliss and we could have been like Nero who fiddled while Rome burned. Neros of the previous and the current generation have led this island nation to this current hellhole. Yes, there is something wrong with us and we should be like Nero and make this country sink into a deeper hellhole.
PS:
Why do we care about an illegal business while none seems to care about? What is wrong with us? Can't we care about our academics and careers only without worrying about what happens to other people's right to health or education?
One person known to me told that doctors are more selfish than people from other employments/ professions. Yet they are ignoring what we as medical students have sacrificed from our careers and education to protest against an illegal business.
This is for my juniors, I salute you all for the sacrifices you have made for this struggle and the guilt that it is our batch that just missed the strike period and you all had to suffer through this, though the problem started for a long time and we did not do enough when we were there as medical students to end it will burn us for the lifetime. Your boycott from the academic activities have created a much wider discussion and impact, though whatever many "learned" people around you may say. It made our lecturers to release press release and express their stance, GMOA to have several one day strikes (though they are too selfish to do a continuous strike or a private practice strike) and the government to propose some solutions (though they are shit). But now I feel it is going nowhere and again we are starting to stagnate like the years before and the losses you are making is far more than whatever this shameless society is going to get by your success. And it is high time we find a recourse balancing the pros and cons.
There will a time come when all of this education system and health system belonging to the private sector and they would be prioritizing money first before everything and people will not have an effective public education/ health institute to turn to. By that time, what we did in the past 5 years would have been distant memories but we would be proud that we fought against it and the foolish society did not realize it.
Indeed ignorance is bliss and we could have been like Nero who fiddled while Rome burned. Neros of the previous and the current generation have led this island nation to this current hellhole. Yes, there is something wrong with us and we should be like Nero and make this country sink into a deeper hellhole.
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| Nero fiddled while Rome burned |
- This year, January a miracle happened in Tamil Nadu (unlikely place for such things to happen and this is not about DMK or AIADMK). After 2-3 years of Jallikattu being banned by the supreme/high court (I am not sure which) and having protested each year for it by farmers, students protested for it democratically and non-violently and were able to make the supreme court bow down to their demand.
- And my friends who were counting how many car permits they can get in their lifetime and when they can get their first car permit, will have difficulty understanding this.
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