The film was received with enthusiasm, and most people stayed for the following Q&A with Burgher historian JB Muller, protagonist Stephen LaBrooy, and Rosanna Flamer-Caldera, daughter of Mystica Flamer-Caldera who stars in the film. In the flow of the discussion the question came up again: What does it mean to be a Burgher? Stephen LaBrooy responds: "It's a state of mind." But what does that actually mean, inquires the woman from the audience who had raised the question? LaBrooy: "It means that you have a pride or an honor to where you came from, but you are very proud of being a Sri Lankan. That's the state of mind. You have been brought up in a Western way of life, so you tend to see things more cut and dried. You don't see as much as an Asian view, as other Sri Lankans. But that makes the difference. That makes the world interesting. Um.... How can I answer this question? As I said, it's a state of mind." What exactly does he mean? I keep wondering while watching the video recording of the discussion that the Goethe Institut had made for me. A more practical approach to the question soon comes from Rosanna Flamer-Caldera: "Speaking from a younger perspective, not my mother's perspective obviously", she says. "Here things have changed so much even in the last 20 years. I look at my childhood and I look at things now, and things are so drastically different that I don't even recognize what it means to be a Burgher anymore. I find that I'm more comfortable saying I'm Sri Lankan and I just happen to have sort of white skin and light eyes which causes me no end of problems. .... It's really a tough tussle, I think, to keep referring to ourselves as Burghers in a country where our community is basically disappearing slowly. ... The Burghers themselves, coming down the ages, they are just as crazy and just as discriminating as everybody else. So, we are nothing special in that area. Thank God that my mother brought me up to look at the world in a different way, so that we treat everybody equally. But the sad fact is that in the Burgher community there is a lot of discrimination and bigotry. But we are not a superior race. We are just equal. We are Sri Lankans." The video I am watching in my apartment in Los Angeles doesn't show the reactions of the predominantly Burgher audience, and I wonder what kind of emotions their faces might reveal....
For now I'm excited about the fact that the film inspires people to talk with each other and to raise questions that are hard and maybe sometimes uncomfortable to answer.
Arun Dias Bandaranaike, Rosanna Flamer-Caldera, Stephen LaBrooy, JB Muller
(courtesy of Goethe Institut Colombo)
Audience at the Goethe Institut in Colombo
(courtesy of Goethe Institut Colombo)
