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Decolonisation and 'the Servants' Toilet'!

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It all starts out in the grand age of trade under colonial rule by European maritime and trade powers. Along the southwestern coastal belt of Ceylon, Portuguese-Indian folk settled for centuries there, grasping at the opportunities of international trade in the early 1900s. This is how by virtue of being the sixth child, I happen to own ten perches of land, give or take a perch here or there, in the back garden of my home. It is not an ancestral home as we did not descend from generations living in that location. It was shamelessly acquired by the spoils of the British Empire. A tale of many colonial millionaires, my grandfather, a carpentry person, acquired and diversified, losing sight of wood for trees and getting fingers in many investment pies.  An unworldly middle-class gent of a simpler countenance - if my father's recollection of his father is to be accepted - on account of being the largest shareholder was appointed as the unlikely Chairman of Bonaz, a Dutch shipping com...
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The Borrowers

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  So what of the collections, the repositories, boxes and catalogues of archival data languishing in British and other former imperial locations? Should not these historical collections be made note of, sifted through and employed in enriching the knowledge and learning of scholars, students and other groups in the former colonised territories?  If historical artefacts are moving back to the territories from whence they were rudely plucked and in some instances, plundered by imperial powers, what should be the rightful and equitable deployment of the collections? While these depositions were in all probability initiated and collated in more formal and dignified practices through structures of colonial rule, yet admittedly informed by the power and access granted to agents of imperial rule operating from positions including that of curator, museum assistant, writer, expert and civil servant.  Sir Norman Boyd Kinnear ordered a survey of Ceylon's mammals as the Curator (circ...
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'To dig one’s spade into one’s own earth! Has life anything better to offer than this?'- Beverley Nichols

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Thesising is about getting one's hands dirty, digging up research, weeding, pruning, growing, seeding, transplanting, potting up, overwatering, overwintering and a lot of prancing about in one's own sandbox. I moved between my thesis work and gardening in the open air which seemed to have a lot in common.  I dallied with the idea of applying for a real-life job as a consultant writer at a railway 'Firm' as my dear departed mother would have called it. He has a 'post' at a 'Firm' all allusions to fixed stable structures. Well, I think perhaps I will dabble in the spading my own earth bit, first. The point is, that it is an awfully difficult decision to make, while being at the same time a frightfully easy one. Well, first you have to have a friend called Neil. Some years ago when I treated Neil of the glen - who had a fresh air observation on most things - to a treatise on the postcolonial misery of Lankan history that nevertheless produced quirky charact...
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The After-Thesis Life

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  Copyright: Timber Press The day after submitting, I awoke with a strange light-headed sense of non-burden from the two-year long 'Goddamit you need to get on with it and shame on you for not finishing your thesis thing' sensation. I had no thesis-guilt. Sat myself down on sofa with Radio 2 blasting out 'Gotta get right back to where we started from'; none of that YouTube jazz cafe or Liszt for studying sounds no more.  Unwrapping a year's worth of New Yorkers, I meticulously sorted em chronologically to catch up on long-reads which easily require three more years to complete.  Undaunted in the manner of a post-doc brain, strung to think any immersion in researched work 'encompassible' as I term it, I delved in.  It only served to stimulate the grey matter further. I was by now running on parallel tracks bubbling away to no avail.  When I picked up the three books I had bought on Abe on trees and gardens in my neighbourhood by a brilliant author I found my...
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Three Years' Later : Submitted!

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 Devastating delay from 200 days to go but what was I thinking? First, I had no actual need to submit the thesis until 2022 September which was a year and 200 days more like.  I guess I was aiming for five years rather than the full six of the part-time student.  At 12 noon on the 29 Feb I submitted my thesis. Three years' after I wrote that first post. Font is important whatever they say. I cannot do Helvetica or Arial on that thesis, and chose Yu Gothic UL which I had used all along for, well, five years. It turned out to be a Japanese font and developed to make lengthy texts readable. Amazing how Jap fonts like this one, Zen Old Mincho leap out at me as being far more legible than others. Yu Gothic spaces the words out more than Calibri for instance, and come in five weights so I tried out Yu Gothic Medium for the title and Header 1. If you have an issue with the TOC chapter on same page as the subtitle in a different line, just place it on the same line with no para ...
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The Sixth Sense : Stumbling upon the theoretical framework of analysis

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Well, I only discovered my theoretical framework of analysis into Chapter Three.  It was tucked away in an insignificant reference by Akhil Gupta in his key article Blurred Boundaries on everyday practices of postcolonial bureaucrats : Research on the state, with its focus on large-scale structures, epochal events, major policies, and "important" people (Evans et al. 1985; Skocpol 1979), has failed to illuminate the quotidian practices (Bourdieu 1977) of bureaucrats that tell us about the effects of the state on the everyday lives of rural people. (Gupta,1995 p. 376) I am convinced that there is a God of Sixth Sense or a metaphysical power that guides me unconsciously to things that I am hardly aware of, that I need, and that are invisible.  What possessed me to look up Pierre Bourdieu remains a mystery. I ordered an Outline of a Theory of Practice and never looked back since. It wasn't easy to get a grip on the stuff as Pierre tends to be write long convoluted sentences ...
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2022: Pandemic behind, Thesis ahead (a little bit to the left)!

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I have good and bad news and spadefuls of optimism! The good news is that we ended the pandemic and jabbed the nation out of misery and prison. Sad for those who were relishing the burrows but the bunnies were out in full swing in January 2022. Oh Covid is still around but it it is not sending us to hospital and no one wants to know anything about it so I shall say no more! Just that long Covid in teenagers and young people should get more attention in the media than a defamation case involving Johnny Depp! The more good news is that last year I finally concluded with great civility and dignity my financial settlement arbitration and I emerged with a year and a half grace period to conclude thesis, find work (holy-moly!) and move on! Maintenance year means I should thesis in peace. The bad news is that I am still struggling to get 'back' into the thesis when I get out! Advice: Don't take breaks if you are like me. Calculate after a break how long your break from thesis was ...
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Well that didn't quite go to plan...

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200 and 30 days more, we arrive at October 1, 2021. The pandemic looks like it's swallowing each and every one of us in its covid jaws, saving the double-jabbed from hospitalisation and death. Most are knocked sideways for months and I have yowled at my just-turned-sixteen year old that she will get her first dose this Saturday. I cannot delay this thesis even further. Since I last notched, two more close family members passed on, one shockingly from a blood clot which is a terribly unexpected event.. Especially hideous when the victim is a teetotaller, non-smoker and a dedicated paediatrician, who elected to leave Manchester for rural Sri Lanka and a very good Christian. I am an aetheist who goes around believing we are bio-chemical blobs moving around in clothes, but then! The second passer-on, my cousin here in Richmond is a great loss. Having a like-minded first cousin on a sharing-Uber route close by is a real treat. Now, when she is a clever conversationalist, lover of jazz a...
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Getting Stuck In: Day One & Two

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  My ex to ok off with the dining table.  Now I must admit I never liked his scandinavian white design (you can sneak a peek at it beyond the teapot) so no tears shed! I've ordered a replacement in glorious oak but the darn thing will only be delivered in weeks. For me though, the thesis needs the table not the bed - which my Egyptian friend swore she did hers on, that crazy wonderful lady - though what is really handy for some is that amazing Amazon contraption which btw, I am not sponsoring but love to insert links to real world objects in my posts. Back to the table: I need room for my mug, computer, extension monitor, elbows, the book stand, etc. So Ikea trestle it is all set up and gtg, no excuse! Log: 23rd and 24th: Got stuck in, printed out the draft chapter and revision comments and started 'knawing' (as I call a combo of gnawing-knowing) at the chapter re-write. To procrastinate I ordered a book which I was advised would help my academic writing style. It mediate...
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200 Days - One Thesis (and this was three whole flippin years' ago!)

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  Hello thesis-writers, researchers, emerging-from-lockdown-ers! As the world cranks back to its normal momentum, here's hoping we can make this time count and get to our finish lines. Me, I've set myself a countdown challenge to write that thesis ! Am  not gonna dwell on this but you may say I am emerging from what is strangely a sort of 3D Year  as I call it:  Of Death, Divorce and hopefully at the end of this one a Doctorate at the end of it...!  Yet I  believe we cannot be defined by a viral pandemic which cranked us to a halt or by any tragedy for too long.  I am gonna create my own momentum and set this goal and purpose to emerge on the other side. See, we still have our groove and somewhere within, creative imagination flickers! So I was moved to log my entries and bits of my inspired thoughts and reflections along the way like little notches. Even prisoners whose days are monotonous are nonetheless moved to mark their passing with notches on...
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