In news reporting, time is everything. That’s one of the first lessons we pick up as cub reporters in any newsroom.
Every newsroom would have colleagues and seniors who have covered big news breaks in the evening, in a matter of hours, adding value to the one line they picked up on a phone call. For print journalists, seeing that intense work acknowledged with a coveted front page byline the next day is the best possible morning high. That’s a story that begins and ends well.
Then there are stories that you hear of and try to follow, only to realise you were a tad late to the party. Recent social media posts in Sri Lanka, about an information board at a suburban railway station, created some buzz online. The board, a photograph showed, listed destinations in other districts and corresponding train timings, but the names were in English and Mandarin, not Sinhala or Tamil. The controversy reminded me of earlier instances of some opposing Arabic sign boards in the island’s eastern districts, or Chinese language sign boards at a construction site.
The reactions to the social media posts ranged from amusement to anger. Soon, the local media reported that the railway authorities and Sri Lanka’s Official Languages Commission would investigate how the board came up, observing it violated the Constitution according to which Sinhala and Tamil are official languages, while English is a link language.
After the infamous, blatantly discriminatory ‘Sinhala Only’ Act of 1956, it was only in 1987 that even Tamil, spoken by about 25% of the country’s population, acquired an “official language” status. Seen against the historical backdrop of the politics of language in Sri Lanka, the recent controversy around Chinese lettering on a public display board was fascinating.
Sri Lanka has one of the highest literacy rates in the region (over 90%) but that pertains to the three languages mentioned in the Constitution. Increasingly though, we do hear of Chinese language classes being offered in the country, including one launched by the Chamber of Commerce in the southern Hambantota district recently. It is not hard to appreciate why someone here or anywhere else might want to learn a new language, but most Sri Lankans are still far from reading display boards in a language other than Sinhala, Tamil or English. That is precisely why this board made news.
I was hoping to see where exactly the board was in the station and if it was the only one there. I wanted to check who put it up, when and for whom.
However, preoccupied with another story I was following, I put my intrigue on the Mandarin display board on hold for two days before I went to the said railway station in Mount-Lavinia, a southern suburb. The masked guard on duty sounded rather upset that the board, apparently put up five years ago by a popular hotel nearby, to help Chinese workers engaged in construction projects and tourists, was removed because of a “mad man” who posted about it on social media.
“Where is it?” I eagerly asked, pulling out my phone to take a picture. “It was here,” he said, pointing to an empty wall. “They removed it just yesterday because of this problem.”
I was late by a day. I was also reminded of something that a senior Colombo-based journalist once said jokingly: “Remember, too much verification kills a story.”
