I wondered down the stairs and found magazines, newspapers and referencing, I flipped open a 2012 Times magazine and onto an article regarding marijuana being grown legally, meticulously for medicinal purposes in Colorado, then over to a story of Taiwan as a new backpackers paradise, things change, I closed, replaced it and moved on, aware I was being watched.
Backup the stairs I headed for the 1st floor, the main book section of the library, small but spacious, passing fiction I headed for 100 Philosophy, next to 99 Social Science. Karl Marx was the outright winner here, closely followed by Lenin, with a book here and there by Gandhi and one from Freud.
Social Science was more varied, outdated, filled with copies of Penguin and Pelican books, costing one shilling back in the 40's, from 19th and 20th century thinkers like H.G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, Kenneth Walken, Thomas Paine, Herbert Spencer, John Parker and a few more Marx's in hard cover for good measure.
Nuwara Eliya used to be the colonials playground it still boasts to have the best golf course in Sri Lanka, sweeping fairways break up the town, the mange dogs love the green grass, the race course unfortunately has seen better days, I guess the Penguin's and Pelican's were donations from those past times by the colonial holiday makers, it's cooler up here.
I picked up "The Common Sense of War and Peace" by H.G. Wells, published by Penguin Paperbacks in 1940 at the start of WWII, complete with cigarette advert on the back, Penguin books was started in 1935 by Allan Lane, who worked for the publishing house of Bodley Head, the story goes that one day unable to buy something good to read on a train, other than trashy mags and newspapers, he decide to make better books more affordable for those wanting to read them, the price of a pack of smokes, this later worked well for authors like Wells as an avenue to publish books, which were I believe rather large articles that would not be published in leading newspapers of the day, as they went against the common thinking and the propergander of the time.
While reading chapter one this phrase stood out, "If it where possible to express this present world conflict in one phase - which it certainly is not - "The struggle of the free men against the led men" might be as serviceable as any". He goes on to discuss if the war is being fought for a defensive or creative reason, "Are we fighting to keep or to make", leading the reader to think if it is right to follow a leader on his beliefs which were built, designed and created by what schooling and what books he has read, and is the war about the beliefs of these "gang's" ideas or for the right of every man in the country.
When I was 12 years old I lived in South Africa under the apartheid regime, that government held back vital knowledge, suppressing not only the local natives but also it's own people, not given them all the information they needed to make an educated decision.
People always ask me about my days growing up under the apartheid system, I left when I was 18 years old, and for the life of me I can't justify my position, I did not do anything bad, I just did not do anything, was it that I never had to vote being too young so politics did not interest me? or did I just not care? or was it that the leaders and their gang did such a good job at keeping me ignorant of the fact of the atrocities that were being committed?
In those days as I can remember, I was very ignorant of what was happening in my own country, in doing nothing I became a "led man" as Wells proclaims, a "free man" stands up for what he believes to be right in his heart and not in his head. I hope the people of this country make the right choice but only history as they say will tell, life as we know it only goes forward.
Every day we must make choices based on how we feel as thinking can only examine memories, and memories can be manipulated by what we are told to the gain, of the raconteur.
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