Nandani Warusavithana’s sorrow

[Disclaimer: neither I nor Ruwan Bandujeewa know of a Nandani Warusavithana. If such a person does exist, please note that none of what follows has anything to do with her. It was a random name that the poet, Bandujeewa, came up with perhaps in the part-delirium of a persisting fever sometime in March 2025]

I’ve mostly met Ruwan Bandujeewa at the ‘Kavi Poth Salpila’ run by poet, novelist and publisher Mahinda Prasad Masimbula. That’s at the annual Book Fair. That’s the only stall I visit and I do so because for many writers, especially poets, it is a meeting point. I know that I will meet a few, whatever the time of day. We talk. I cherish the conversations because I always learn something from poets, especially those writing in Sinhala.

So we talk. Have tea.

We meet randomly at book launches, either at the Library Services Board auditorium or the Mahaweli Centre. Talk. Tea.

It is rare that we plan to meet. We did last week. At some point he told me about Nandani Warusavithana. Yes, the fictional character. I asked him how he came by that name. He laughed, almost in embarrassment, and said he did not know.

Here’s the context. As mentioned, he had a fever that kept him home for several weeks. On a whim, he had explored AI and tried his hand at fusing African and Chinese music. As he fiddled around he discovered that he could ‘sing’ as in, he would voice some words and the engine would generate melody and music. It would correct the obvious flaws of rendition. So he had written a few songs.

One was about the palaa-pala of moonlight, drawing from the superstitions related to geckos, i.e. what is portended by the place on the body that a gecko might fall. In Sinhala it is referred to as hoonu-palaa-pala or simply hoonu-saasthara. ‘Moonlight’ was the poetic twist. If it fell on the right eyebrow, what would it mean? If it fell on the shoulder, then? Such questions he answered in the song. I told him that he could publish a collection of these fever-day songs and call it ‘handa-eliye palaa-pala.’ He laughed.

Then he mentioned Nandani Warusavithana. Here goes:

Having visited Dambana
and met the ancients there
she noted they weren’t ancient enough for her
Miss Nandani Warusavitharana was inconsolably distraught

At the elephant orphanage
since not a single elephant smiled at her
Miss Nandani Warusavitharana was inconsolably distraught

At the museum
upon seeing a taxidermy mount of a bear
weeping like a female bear that had lost her cubs
Miss Nandani Warusavitharana was inconsolably distraught

At the planetarium
unable to find in the sky
that one star she loved the most
Miss Nandani Warusavitharana was inconsolably distraught

Simple stuff. Hilarious too. And that’s how this ‘works,’ at least for me. It reminded me of a conversation I had with my Grade 6 class teacher, Sunimal Silva. I wasn’t his best student but not the worst either. I did nothing noteworthy in that Grade 6 classroom.

Anyway, more than thirty years later, I happened to take my daughters to the school’s swimming pool because I had heard of a coach who was kind and grandfatherly. It was him. We had met many times over the years, so the recognition was immediate.

‘Are these your daughters? I will coach them!’

I didn’t even have to ask.  

‘Is this your wife?’

So I made the introductions. Then he declared, in Sinhala, ‘of all the students I’ve taught throughout my career as a teacher, he is the one who did absolutely nothing with the skills he had.’

I couldn't help but smile. That was the way he expressed affection, I now feel. And now, thinking of that moment, it occurs to me that Sunimal Sir actually believed I had skills.

I just responded, ‘sir, aathma thrupthiya neveida vadagath vanne (isn’t contentment what matters most)?’

His tone and demeanour changed immediately: ‘ow, ehemanam hariyatama hari (yes, if that’s the case, it’s all good).’  

I think I was just being clever. Somehow, over the years, I had acquired some decent level of competence when it comes to repartee.

Nandani Warusavithana is a random name that came to my friend from who knows where, but her grief is common to us all to the extent that we are enamoured with expectations, the splendour that’s in the advertisement but is less than promised, and sense of the exotic in place, artefact and love that is anticipated with such relish but disappoints and the promised land that’s non-existent.  

Contentment. That seems to be the key factor.

In Uruvela, a long time ago, the Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, elaborated on this to the Kassapas. It’s in the Santuṭṭhi Sutta (ref the Anguttara Nikaya or the Numerical Discourses of the Buddha).

‘When you’re content with what’s blameless, trifling, and easy to find, you don’t get upset about lodgings, robes, food, and drink, and you’re not obstructed anywhere,’ the Kassapas were told.

Not becoming agitated is what it is about. For example if a monk does not get a robe he should not be agitated, and if he does get one he should use it ‘without being tied to it, un-infatuated with it, nor blindly absorbed in it, seeing the danger in it, understanding the escape.’

Do we? Can we? Miss Nandani Warusavithana couldn’t. Her fascinations were mild, ours may not be. Ruwan Bandujeewa, as usual, touched a nerve. And laughed about it. At himself, at me, at all of us. I am enriched. Fascinated. Time to ‘see the danger.’ Time to stop.