Tectonic shifts

Sanjana Hattotuwa-December 22, 2018, 

I first saw the Cathedral in Christchurch through satellite imagery. This perspective, from space, didn’t give a sense of the building’s grandeur, evident at ground level. Neither had I visited New Zealand when I saw it, nor at the time, did I have any plans to either. Late February 2011, a new web platform was set up to assess the damage to the city after an earthquake devastated it on the 22nd. Part of a wider range of technologies that pioneered crowd-sourced disaster relief, the platform was the first of its kind at the time, allowing anyone, anywhere in the world, help in vital post-disaster damage assessments through their browser. I spent about three to four days glued to my laptop, going through tile after tile, recording what I saw. Hundreds, if not many more at the time, joined me in what was a global effort to help Christchurch ascertain which areas of the city were most badly in need of urgent assistance. Thousands of man hours contributed to an effort the city and government couldn’t manage themselves, creating a template and setting a foundation for many disaster relief efforts that followed.

Visiting in person, for the first time, the city last week and seeing the Cathedral in its present condition requires a column of its own. It is, even in ruin and an advanced state of decay, a majestic building to behold, retaining a dignity unblemished by the disaster. 185 people died that fateful February day. Christchurch was changed irrevocably. Everywhere, the city still carries the scars of the devastation - from the plethora of parking lots where once buildings stood, to structures taken over by bracken and adorned by graffiti that visually contribute to a wonderful character and feel, yet also serve as reminders of how massive and widespread the disaster was. I could also write about the discovery of and walking down Colombo Street, one of the oldest roads in the city and now its main thoroughfare, named after the Anglican bishopric of Sri Lanka.

I could write about community-led urban rejuvenation of neighbourhoods or how old, colonial buildings, now repurposed as hip cafes or trendy restaurants, carefully preserve key architectural features and facades, seamlessly yet intentionally merging history with modernity. The inevitable consequence of having to pay for what is almost an entirely new city, I could focus on the branded shopping that has almost entirely crowded out once vibrant local businesses, forcing many from the city and area to look for cheaper rent in less frequented suburbs or just shutter their business, unable to afford the high rent and associated taxes. All this and more colours a city still grappling with their tsunami-moment.

What I do want to write about in some detail may not immediately seem to be connected with home. T?ranga, opened on October 12, is the city’s new public library. I have been to and love spending time in the British Library, the Boston Public Library and the New York Public Library, which defy easy or comprehensive capture for those who haven’t experienced them. All these libraries are nothing like anything in Sri Lanka that we know and associate with the term. T?ranga is, even in comparison to these buildings, quite extraordinary. The architecture, developed in collaboration with the Maori, incorporates communal motifs and is designed in such a way as to face culturally important points in the region. It is absolutely breathtaking from outside, and equally so from inside. A quote from the Danish lead architect Carsten Auer from the firm schmidt hammer lassen is worth repeating as frame that captures the ethos of the building,

"Libraries have moved on from being repositories of books to being multi-media hubs and social hubs. The modern library is the ‘third space’ between home and work. It’s a place where you can meet people or be ‘alone together,’ enjoying sharing a social and recreational space with others, even if you are not engaging directly with them."

With over 180,000 books and magazines to start with, a mind-boggling number of Lego pieces, free WiFi, free meeting spaces better equipped than most offices in Colombo I have seen, an audio and video production studio, maker-spaces for kids to print their own 3D creations, an entire floor devoted to young adults and children to play and read, two excellent cafes, floor to ceiling glass enclosed, sound-proofed quiet rooms, completely digitized catalogues, equipment that I had to ask staff about because they were so alien (something that looked and sounded like a Geiger counter, hooked up to a smart phone, when run across shelves, does inventory and identifies misplaced books) to the seating, which ranged from bean bags and lounge to ergonomically designed chairs paired to communal or individual work tables, I’ve never seen anything remotely like this building.

Membership is,

astonishingly, free

On the first floor, as I walked through the building, I saw unaccompanied children - in groups or entirely alone, in various contortions and corners (one was upside down on a bean bag), immersed in reading. That touched a chord, and of all things in the world, made me tear up. A short while later, as I was taken around the library by a volunteer guide who, as luck would have it, was a gentleman with over 30 years of experience in journalism and had retired as the Editor of a leading regional newspaper, I was able to articulate to myself and him why that image touched a nerve I didn’t realize was raw. We talked about Ondaatje, literature, journalism, the earthquake and obviously, on reading. When the conversation turned, invariably, to contemporary politics, I had to encapsulate in a nutshell the catastrophic and enduring consequences of the President’s actions on October 26. Recalling Will Durant’s quote on how civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice, I said that not unlike the earthquake which struck his city, the tectonic political shift in Sri Lanka would reverberate for some time to come, with after-shocks, anxiety and the slow but undeniable recognition that the country would not be the same again, or could revert to what once was. As I said this, we were surrounding by children, reading. I went on to say that so much he took for granted - access to and an appreciation of the arts, culture, literature, for free, from childhood, was precisely what was marginal, devalued, de-funded or under-funded back home. Coming out of the experience of documenting the coup, what struck me was how our appreciation of what happened is limited, in a temporal sense. Aside from what little we know about the significant economic implications, even our concern about the fallout of the coup is limited at best to a few years hence and to macro-economic indicators.

And yet at T?ranga I saw the kind of long-term investment we never really see in Sri Lanka - public spaces for learning, information and knowledge, encouraging children to critically question, experiment, roam and think free. A library as a space for public congregation and interaction just doesn’t exist in Sri Lanka. Heck, even the importance of a basic library is lacking. Some weeks ago I spoke to some intrepid young students in Sri Lanka who were behind a campaign to collect book donations to establish and populate a library in a fairly large out-station school which I was told hadn’t one. For me, that is beyond astonishing - it borders on the criminal.

That wonderful image of a child, upside down, immersed in his reading, struck a chord because it captures in a single frame every single thing in Sri Lanka we do not yet and have for decades never invested meaningfully in - children, public spaces, community, the arts, culture, reading, education, innovation and the development of critical thinking. I realized that I teared up not only because I sorely missed my son in that moment, but also because I was reminded - beyond the tens of millions of social media data points I’ve engaged with over eight weeks - of how tragically under-developed we are as a country, writ large. The five levels of T?ranga are anchored to Maori concepts of connection, community, identity, discovery and creativity. Precisely the things we have for decades neglected and continue to marginalize. And that is why for all our chest-thumping patriotism and priapic nationalism, we will in reality, continue to languish behind even our South Asian sisters.