Wanted 11 Caribbean bandits

A class action has been filed in the national Kangaroo court against 11 men suspected to be from an assortment of islands in the Caribbean for stealing precious metal of global significance. The heist, carried out in broad flood-light, has been captured on CCTV and beamed live to an estimated audience of two billion. The metal was expected to be presented to Sri Lanka by a global authority but was grabbed from its grasp in complete public view. Twelve suspects, all Sri Lankan, have been found guilty of aiding and abetting in the crime.

Accused number 12 through to 4 have been released with a suspended sentence. The 3rd accused has been banned from entering any kind of finely-manicured green fields for wielding a misfiring sling during the heist. The 2nd accused has entered into a plea bargain, vowing not to lead any men into nervous prostration.

However, the first accused, despite a reasonable alibi, has been peremptorily held responsible for the year’s most calamitous downer. His crime: merely being a spectator at the crime scene. He has allegedly been spotted at several quondam crime scenes. The Prosecution constituting 21 million islanders irreproachably argued that the prime suspect was solely culpable, pettifogging that calamity would have stayed away if he had.

A blob of homely lassies draped in slapstick costumes have now been dismissed without charge. The Caribbean men who moonlighted with the metal have been granted immunity by the International Court of Justice. The islanders have been on an indefinite spell of mourning in the wake of Sunday’s debacle.

Meanwhile, the World Mental Health Day arrived right on cue.

From a euphoric ballpark the island had atomised into one melancholy madhouse, in just under 20 damning overs. The National Institute of Mental Health ceased the befalling to stage a march sallying forth from Angoda to draw attention to the need to reintegrate 21 million patients back to normalcy.

Let me put sarcasm on <PAUSE> for a moment.

The T20 fiasco illustrated the lugubrious plight of a nation yearning for the sporadic respite from travails of life. Cricket, undoubtedly, offered a weary nation a rare fortuity of euphoria on a collective scale. That our well-deserved moment of undefiled joy was robbed in a moment of madness is inadmissible.

Exasperated islanders are battling to remain sane in a society gone cuckoo and yes it is a germane interval to talk about mental wellbeing. For the men and women who are institutionalised, our hearts go out. They may never feel the brutal reality of living in the ‘open’ in what we still call civil society, but they may also never be endowed with the eternal hope that fuels our journey.

Press <PLAY> button

We Sri Lankans have a short memory and we never give up! An oddball proposal has been presented to the ICC to play another T20 tournament with the final slated for 21 December. Aptly titled the Doomsday Cup, Sri Lanka has offered to host the tournament. And yes, we will be in the final, again! The usual suspects will be at it again but hopefully, we will prevail. Today’s villains may well turn our heroes; I certainly hope they do. But, for once, it may not matter as the doomsday prophets promise the ultimate show of pyrotechnics.

Win or lose, we can go out with a bang!

(Dinesh Watawana is a former foreign correspondent and military analyst. He is a brand consultant and heads The 7th Frontier, an integrated communications agency which masterminded the globally-acclaimed eco tourism hotspot KumbukRiver. Email him at [email protected].)