I knew songs. Sometimes I knew who sang them. I didn’t know the lyricists. Back then access to music was limited to what the ‘owners’ of the radio played. So it depended on what they preferred of programs aired by the less than half a dozen radio channels.
Campus life changes all that. I had friends who knew and could sing songs. They sang. They talked about the lyrics, the sentiments and sometimes the vocalist, composer and lyricist.
By the time ‘Pavana (The wind)’ came around, thanks in part to the political turmoil of the late eighties, the name was familiar and intricately tied to the songs of Nanda Malini.
The late eighties were made of fire, of people being burnt alive or after being shot on tyres, of bodies floating down waterways or piling up in street corners, of political assassinations, indefinite curfews, abductions, torture, proxy arrests, burning of ID cards etc. The capture-all word was ‘bheeshanaya.’ Terror, in English.
As the nation moved almost inexorably toward that time, it was natural for artists of all kinds to take sides and some of them to express their opinions freely in word and deed. The late Nanda Malini used song as her vehicle. Sunil Ariyaratne chose her as his vehicle for he was the principal lyricist of the concert that swept through the country, expressing the fears, hopes, determination and of course pathos of it all: Pavana. Literally, ‘The Wind.’
Since then, there have been critics who have opined that the concert and therefore singer and lyricist ‘pushed’ the youth of the country into the cauldron wherein there was so much killing and being killed that everyone lost whatever moral high ground they may have had. They have even argued that in the matter of taking sides, the singer and lyricist forgot to take a stand that kept them distanced from culpability, if that were possible in the first place.
In short, Nanda became political even as Ariyaratne was political. The concert marked them both. Ironically, the songs have since been used by those they opposed and critiqued to further agenda that neither espoused. That’s another story.
The bheeshanaya ended. Perhaps the outcome was unanticipated or, at any rate, made for disappointment rather than celebration or even relief, as far as they were concerned. He continued to write, she continued to sing. He was vocal outside his lyrics, she was relatively quiet.
Now she’s gone. He remains. Answerable, one might say, but then again, the generous reading is that Sunil Ariyaratne never felt he had to apologise. He wrote what he believed was right. He spoke the truth of his conscience. People are free to cheer or decry. I, for one, haven’t been impressed, especially in the positions he has taken on issues of nation, nationalism, conflict dubbed as ‘ethnic’ and so on, although many other political songs do resonate. The pre-Pavana commentary still stands and I do celebrate and am still inspired by the substance and of course the poetry. Sunil Ariyaratne was and is an amazing poet who has the words and the sensibilities to immediately capture a reader.
Maybe it’s the way in which I was brought up or the ideological preferences I embraced and the love and appreciation of all things Sri Lankan, including history and heritage, but when I listen to the songs of the album Satyaye Geethaya (The Song of Truth), I feel that she sang to me and of me. Of course, this means that Ariyaratne wrote to me and of me. This is true of the songs he wrote for other artists as well, for it was not only for Nanda Malini that he wrote and it was not only Nanda Malini who sought and sang his lyrics.
He has changed his tune, so to speak, over the years. He has not explained nor apologised, but he didn’t have to. He just wrote. Differently. But then again, even when he wrote what some might think were lines that were ill-informed or deliberately misleading, the poetry was really great. The command of metaphor, the ability to draw from many social, cultural, political and environmental wells and mix it all tastefully was always exceptional. One might add that this is as true of his cinematic endeavors as in his poetry.
More
than forty years ago, in Polgolla, as a first year student of the
University of Peradeniya, I wasn’t too embarrassed by my ignorance. I
feel that I have been harsh on Sunil Ariyaratne since. Political and
ideological disagreements notwithstanding, I can and will return to
Nanda Malini in all my remaining years. Unlike in those early years when
I knew songs but not singer and lyricist, I will think of Sunil
Ariyaratne and tell myself that I am privileged to know the language
that Sunil Ariyaratne writes in. Sinhala.
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