Rags

I attended my first Sri Lankan birthday party on Tuesday, the first of two I was invited to this week. It was to celebrate the 4th birthday of my little pukey friend who decided to gift me with some vomit on my leg for my own birthday (see previous post. I guessed she was six in that post, way off). I didn't return the favor, but I did eat some wonderful food at both her party and the second one, held for the one year old son of a Kandy pastor. If you are invited as a guest into a Sri Lankan home, they make sure they bring out the fattened calf, or in this case, ten different curries, to thank you for your presence. And no, is not an option. It doesn't matter if you are full, you keep eating until they are satisfied.

At the second party I met a little girl who was wearing a rather interesting headband. I have learned that Bob Marley is intensely popular in Sri Lanka, so it is not uncommon to Jamaican flags and pictures of marijuana leaves as stickers on three-wheeled taxis and plastered on city walls. However, this was the first time I have seen the cannabis leaf worn as clothing by a toddler. It shouldn’t really surprise me, since Sri Lanka is full of such anachronisms.
There is a certain irony in the way that western products have received an open-armed (and often naive) acceptance by Sri Lankan culture. It is the kind of irony that would explain a 3 year old sporting a pot-leaf as headgear. Or, a woman at the local Bible college proudly parading the campus, Bible in hand, with the “Hustler” logo emblazoned across her t-shirt clad chest.
Ability to read English aside, I don’t think the message or logo which appears on their clothing bears any real importance to the average wearer in Sri Lanka. For example: Trying to strike up conversation with a teenage, English speaking friend of mine, I asked him, pointing at the emblem on his shirt and shorts, if the New York Knicks were his favorite basketball team? He replied, "Who are the Knicks?"

As the tonnes and tonnes of western designed clothes make there way across the ocean to this little island, I am convinced that there is some pit stop a long the way where they layover and take time to neuter the cultural meaning from any phrase, word or slogan that may have held any sort of potency in the country in which it was conceived. After such neutering, a pastor-in-training at a Bible college can promote a porno magazine with a logo on her shirt with a free mind and guilt-less conscience. The original virility of the message honestly means nothing. In so doing, the shirt-as-billboard simply becomes clothing. A rag to cover nakedness. The message which it proclaims bears no real representation of the beliefs of its wearer. I probably wouldn’t be able to score some weed from my small friend with the rastafari headband. She probably couldn’t even tell me what her headband bore a picture of. It bears a message but to her it holds no significance.

It bears a message but holds no meaning.

“...by this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another...”

Every once and awhile I see these shirts (moreso in North America than here) that say ,“LOVE” right across the front . I have thought, man, I would really like to make a proclamation like that, but that is a lot of pressure. What if I wear that shirt one day, and I do something unloving? What if my life can't back up this LOVE that I'm "wearing"?

If I bear the label of love on my life, but don't allow that label to hold any significant power over my life, it is just a rag. It is just a rag that I use to dress up in, to be fashionable, to show that I belong to a certain club. If it bears a message but holds no meaning, that is all it is - a rag, not really useful for anything except for covering nakedness.