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~ a story of life, love and other things

Vositha's Blog

Monthly Archives: May 2013

“The Missing Game”

26 Sunday May 2013

Posted by vositha in Fiction, Relationships

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arguments, I miss you, relationships

“You said you will come this week!”

“Counsel you are distorting the facts!”

He smiles but does not admit the truth.

“You told me you would come this weekend, and I will come the next,” I reply, ensuring words are separated properly, and would cause no more confusion.

“Oh! Come on!”

I had forgotten this game of repeating the same thing, while the other would not admit what he said less than one hour ago.
I had spoken to him a few minutes ago, and I was pretty sure as to how the conversation went. Actually I could tell each word of the conversation. It was a blessing or a curse I possessed: being able to recite what others tell, even when I should not be remembering it.

“So are you are not going to come?” he repeats. It was like talking to a kid, who was not willing to lose an argument. (Mental note: two lawyers together can be a little problematic at times, specially neither lets go of one’s case)

“You know I can’t! I thought we went through this once!” I reply, finally frustrated at him for just picking a stupid fight, for the sake of annoying me.

“I do not want to fight with you!”

“You call this fighting?” he asks.

I decide silence be the best treatment for him, simply knowing that he was just trying to get my attention.

“We are not going to do this! I will talk to you later!” I tell him.

“Are you crying?”

I was not crying, but on the verge of exploding after a long exhausting day, that seemed never ending.

Silence.
We both wait.

“Sorry”

Silence.

“I miss you!” he says.

“Simple as Coffee and PJs”

22 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by vositha in Fiction, Relationships

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coffee, dating, life, relationships

Aiden had decided that his patience with me was going to be an enduring one. Despite my notions of pushing him away, he had decided to stick around, keep his patience, and to make things work. Or at least try to make them work.

I was silent in acknowledging my appreciation, which of course came in small portions, and was generally transferred through telepathy, being happy to afford him bitchy me and nice me at occasions and then just by making sure that I would not be a “runaway bride” and run away from all forms of relationship notions.

However, I was surprised when he picked our first “couple-like” fight. It was over some silly hair-cut which he thought he did not need and I thought would be nice if he had.

The drift of the topic was such that he thought he looked better with longer hair with his curls being visible to the world (of which I have no complains, and which of course has its own attraction) and my thinking that he would look better with a shorter hair-cut for a change, looking a bit matured.

“ I will look like a pencil” he says.
“You do look like one when you have your normal hair-cut, that is why I am telling that you would look better in a one!” I tell him.
It then stretches to shirts, and number of shirts he would be travelling with and comes back to hair. I have lately realised that Aiden and I have a common ground. We both do take our own time to forget things. Or rather being too” lawyerish,” we both try to take our own time, but come back to proving each-one’s side of the argument, providing ourselves intervals if needed.

“So what you going to do about ‘your’ hair?”
“ I think I will go bald,” I reply.
“Good, you will look good then!” he adds.

I felt his last retort was too silly to be commenting on and decided that I did not want to continue playing this game of whether he needs a hair-cut or I need to go bald to improve my looks. I think he also had run out of his arguments, and was just being an idiot. Thankfully enough to which-ever be the cause, he decides he will get his hair-cut, and I decide that I will be silent and be rationed in pestering him.
Immediate result : conversation turns to normalcy, over weather that is gloomy which he hates, and then to International Court of Justice or something totally random as the pattern on his PJs.

I have realized of late thanks to Aiden, that life can be simple if I do not embark on my normal mission of adopting a cause for reform.
Things are simple if we decide to keep it that way. It’s very simple, like simply agreeing that smell of coffee is good in the morning, and that he would have looked good in his alphabet print PJs had he been 5 years old.

But the bottom line, in life I laugh. And he laughs with me too!

“A Single Mum, a Working Mum”

02 Thursday May 2013

Posted by vositha in Uncategorized

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Tags

Akashiv, babies, taking care of toddlers, working mother in Sri Lanka

SAM_1723I wake up at 4 am to the sound of my son calling “tha tha tha”. He is still too young to distinguish between genders, and is happy calling everyone dad. Or at least that is what the sounds combined would mean in Sinhala. But nope, Akashiv does not think it has any difference, whether he calls his mum dad, or mum. He likes the word and he shalt use it.

The early hours of the morning consists on hugging the kid in an attempt to convince him that it is time to sleep, and not the time to try climbing off the cot, to jump on mummy’s bed, to make an attempt to pull mummy’s hair. He does not agree. He likes the list as they be, and many more added to it. So yes, mummy shall stay awake till he decides to sleep. And that of course is when mummy has to prep up for work. But “who cares?” Right? Mummy needs to play with baby, and baby insists.

I open the laptop, check my mail. There was a time I looked for personal mail, but now, it seems more like work, work, and work. The inbox be filled with mailing list based communication which seem to over-flow.

Baby is up, and he wonders what mummy does. She seems to like poking her finger on some letters more than she likes to spend time with him, so he must like whatever that thing is!
“Let me try to poke too!!” A high-speed crawling baby approaches mummy’s laptop just to see what is so fascinating that mummy does not seem to have time for him.

“NO NO Akashiv! Do not pull out letters off the key board!”

Too late! “T” has suffered a sudden death, permanently segregated itself from my keyboard.

Akashiv looks at me with a quizzical look. Comes close to the bed post and plays with his shadow. He has discovered of late that he can shake his fingers and make the shadows move, among other things such as : if he pulls hard the protection on the play pen will come off, if he puts his hand into a jug of milk it can be spilled, if he pulls on the spoon used to feed him he can apply the pulp being fed all over himself.

I continue typing, he peeps in and I let him sit on my lap and try to remove more letters off my keyboard.

He shrieks with pleasure, tries to stick fingers up my nose, fails and resorts to making sounds again.

And I turn to reading my mail, again.

“Traditional Knowledge at Stake”

01 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by vositha in Guest Bloggers

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bio-piracy, Jagath Gunawardana, Kaushalya Premachandra, Naazima Kamerdeen, The Convention on Bio-Diversity

Written by Kaushalya Premachandra

“Traditional knowledge is an important part of Sri Lankan culture and identity. Today, it has also been identified as a source of valuable information, which can be used for innovation and economic gain.” says Naazima Kamardeen, lecturer at the Faculty of Law,  University of Colombo.

The idea of traditional knowledge can be drawn from different facets that relate to the ‘system of self-management governing resource use which is embedded in the social and cultural practices of the community. This is generally transmitted through oral tradition and first hand observation.

Traditional knowledge is focused on in recent times due to an increasing number of bio-piracy acts and a major threat has been identified in the area that includes mainly the uses, preparation, processing and formulation of useful plant species, for example, for medicinal purposes.

Biopiracy of Medicinal Plants

An act of bio-piracy occurs when traditional knowledge is being used for commercial purposes without permission of the communities that contributed to the development of traditional methods and technologies of resource use and without compensating or acknowledging their rights in traditional knowledge.

Sri Lanka is home to many plant varieties that have high medicinal value. The values of these plants are known through their usage by our ancestors as successful home remedies for curing sicknesses. Our precious ayurvedic medicine system, on the other hand, carries a wider knowledge base of the uses of these medicinal plants and herbs. The knowledge has passed from generation to generation that even today many of us first try the traditional home remedies before consulting a doctor, sometimes for the belief that these medicines are harmless.

With a modern tendency of recognizing the values of herbal medicines and treatments as human-friendly with less or no side effects traditional knowledge has gathered huge attention by the scientists and companies with monetary values. Sadly, the efforts have been successful and most of them with a patent in hand at the end of the day.

According to the senior environmental lawyer, Jagath Gunawardene, there are more than 500 patent applications based on our traditional knowledge based biological resources and about 130 of that regarding the medicinal plant kothalahimbutu. Komarika, gotu-kola, lunuwila, bilinchi, kurundu are few other plants that are patented else where. Even though, ‘novelty’ is strict eligibility criteria for patenting an invention, none of these patent applications provides for any isolation of an active ingredient of the plant genetic resources or anything of the sort to claim the invention as something that is not contemplated by prior art. Instead, they refer to biochemical extractions and other biological properties of the plant, the result of which is prior to them is known to us. If we take as an example, Japan has been granted a patent for making an extract in water or alcohol to use in preparations for making toothpaste, ointments and such for the purpose of preventing cries in teeth using 12 Sri Lankan medicinal plants. How far one can call the making of such extract a scientific invention is questionable. However, as the patent itself highlights it is evident that they have followed our traditional knowledge of the uses of the plants for the same purpose.

When the developed countries are tend to grant patents for such petty discoveries it raises issues regarding our valuable traditional knowledge circulating around so care free.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) addresses the issue of protecting traditional knowledge and recognizes the system of access and benefit-sharing of genetic resources (ABS).

Article 8(j) of the Convention provides that “each contracting party shall, as far as possible and appropriate:

Subject to its national legislation, respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and promote their wider application with the approval and involvement of the holders of such knowledge, innovations and practices and encourage the equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilization of such knowledge, innovations and practices…”

The Article emphasizes on preserving traditional knowledge, innovation and practices as required for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. It encourages the equitable sharing of benefits that result from the utilization of such knowledge, innovations and practices. However, in front of Article 15 that separately deals with the regulation of “access to genetic resources”, Article 8(j) seems to be a vague picture of benefit-sharing or in other words, the convention is clear as to how we should let them access to our genetic resources but not how our rights in benefit-sharing should be realized.

By Article 15 the protection over ‘biological resources’ is narrowed down to just ‘genetic resources.’ The term genetic in the scientific world is restrained to DNA and RNA molecules that leave out many other biological aspects of a plant. As Jagath Gunawardene points out none of the patent applications with claims against our traditional knowledge has actually dealt with genetic resources of the plant, but mostly with biochemical extractions.

“A plant is not all about its genetic resources and if patents have already been granted for inventions based on other biological materials of a plant, what protection does Article 15 of the convention regulating access on genetic resources confer on a country with a rich biological value?” he questioned.

Sri Lanka is not a signatory to the Nagoya Protocol on access to genetic resources and benefit-sharing which is supplementary to the CBD.

Domestic Mechanisms for the Protection of Traditional Knowledge

“Sri Lanka does not have a strong mechanism to protect traditional knowledge. The only mention made in the Intellectual Property (IP) Act is under the section on copyright, and that too only for folkore, which is just a small part of traditional knowledge.” says Naazima Kamardeen pointing out the need to identify the various aspects of traditional knowledge and either amend the Act or institute new legislation to protect them. “Otherwise, in the absence of laws, bio-piracy will take place.” she emphasized.

The Fauna and Flora Protection Act, the Forests Ordinance and the Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Act are the major warriors at war against unethical usurpation of biological resources of the country. These laws lay down offensive measures against damaging, causing injury, selling and exporting of the respective biological resources including the aquatic resources, hence the only means of protection, despite the fact that the issue is tackled indirectly.

Recognition of indigenous people’s rights over there natural resources and identifying traditional knowledge in the IP regime as in Philippines are what most discussions on the topic seek to address in the world today. We shall look forward if the national policy on traditional knowledge on the draft will initiate a direct step forward for the protection of traditional knowledge and to ensure our communities’ right to share in the benefits that result from the utilization of their knowledge by others.

“As on recent news the government seeking assistance of the Japanese cosmetic industry to reacquire patent rights of native plants and herbs is surely an appreciable involvement of the government, but the promises which we would rather cautiously watch out, as long as Japan remains the culprit of a larger number of acts of – against Sri Lanka, where India comes second” Jagath Gunawardene commented.

Time is right for us to think and act towards our own protection mechanism.

 

 

Kaushalya Premachandra

01 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by vositha in Guest Bloggers

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Center for Law and Analysis, Kaushalya Premachandra, University of Colombo

Picture0044 copyKaushalya Premachandra is a final year law student at the faculty of law, University of Colombo. She loves music, poetry and enjoys being alone in a quiet and peaceful environment. Having been sensitive to environmental issues since childhood she currently volunteers at Sri Lankan Youth Climate Action Network, and works as a research assistant at the Center for Law and Analysis.

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