Mahagama Sekera, alive after all these years

It is not always that one reads forewords and introductions.  We tend to skip what we sometimes take to be necessary frill for author/publisher but eminently skippable for reader.  There is a risk.  A small one, of course.  I have skipped such preambles often for the main text beckoned more urgent perusal.  There’s one I didn’t miss and I am glad: the literary and philosophical gem that is the introduction to Mahagama Sekera’s defining poetic narrative, ‘Prabuddha’.  That essay was commissioned by the poet himself and is a piece of writing that Sekera never got to see, just as he didn’t see the book in print. 

Sekera died on January 14, 1976 at the age of 46.  Eight years ago I asked myself, ‘Would Mahagama Sekera be still alive had he not left us at forty six?’  He did not die in 1976, for he was alive when he first came to me, again in the form of a book that my father brought home later that year, ‘Mahagama Sekarage Geetha (Mahagama Sekarara’s Lyrics)’.  He has been alive since, in all the lyrics to which melody, music and voice were added to give us memorable songs.  He was alive a month ago at the Nelum Pokuna when Pundit Amaradeva sang what is widely held as the people’s national anthem, ‘Ratna Deepa Janma Bhoomi’.  And these days, I see him often as I try my hand at translating ‘Prabuddha’ into English. 

Death was, naturally, the last visitor he entertained on that day.  But before that moment when he breathed his last, we are told that the director of ‘Yasho Geethaya’ had come to his Gampaha residence to discuss a documentary film on ‘Ratna Deepa’.  The shoot had been scheduled for the following day.  Between that visit and death, Sekera is said to have attended to the final edits of his doctoral dissertation.  It was earlier in the day that Sekara had met the man he commissioned to write the foreword to Prabuddha, the late Ven. Dhammavihari, then Prof Jothiya Dheerasekera. 

He had called the professor and asked for a meeting before the arranged day.  The professor had expressed surprise that Sekera, given his vast knowledge on a wide range of subjects and proven excellence across many literary genres was nevertheless not holding a teaching post in a university.  He had pointed out in particular the depth of meaning in Prabuddha and the fine deployment of critical faculties in unlayering a social, political, cultural and philosophical milieu.  Sekera, according to Prof Dheerasekera, displayed innumerable and happy elements of a writer endowed with a poetic disposition filled with generosity, humility and honesty.  Sekera had merely stated, ‘In that case, it would be best that you write the introduction’. 

Dheerasekera’s introduction refers to Sekera’s previous work, including Maknisada Yath (The reason being…), Nomiyemi (I am immortal) and specific lyrics for stage plays.  The way he describes the man mirrors the nature of the main character of the epic poem, Prabuddha.  The story is a veritable exposition of the cultural, literary and musical tastes of the time, the changes therein, the dangers ahead and the possible ways of recovering the humanity that was clearly under threat.  Dheerasekera elevates Prabuddha to an importance of a nature that calls for a replication of the work in all art forms.  Indeed, such an exercise is the responsibility of youth with discerning taste and exceptional creative ability.  

Prabuddha was his last poetic exercise, although his doctoral dissertation, Sinhala Gadya Padya Nirmana Kerehi Ridmaya Balapa Athi Akaraya (Influence of Rhythm on the Sinhala Prose and Poetry)’ can theoretically be read as a similar unfolding.  Sekera may not have anticipated the ‘end’ that Prabuddha clearly marked, but Prabuddha, on account of his passing, marks his, philosophically, politically and literally, in a manner more pronounced than his other work. This is why it is the most frequently quoted and referred to of all his work, none of which can be called ‘lesser’. 

Sekera, in Prabuddha, brings a nation and a collective back to something that was and encourages a journey to a something that can still be (better).  It is a call for a softer engagement drawing from Buddhism but not exclusive from that doctrine.  There is a world he envisaged and which he promised to design, before leaving (dying).  He could not, but he did sketch a blueprint, or rather gathered blueprint from the civilizational ethos which made him who he was and which can be the foundation of a cultural, social and moral edifice that we could all inhabit.

From the silent sky

where the half-moon becomes pronounced
by and by
there drips the milk
for a child’s heart;
the infant son smiles
dreaming of the new world
that will come up tomorrow.
 
In this motherland
where a nation of giants
who built the thousand reservoirs
are now reborn
new freedoms emerge
in a myriad of color
elegantly polished
by his smile;
I wipe my tears
and see
the little boy reigning
in a debt-free fear-free tomorrow
 
Little sons all,
who conjure the spring
that wipe weariness
from tired limb,
know this:
when I see you
that labor is pleasure
nothing else;
I cannot leave,
before I craft
that world
I’ve made and shaped
over twenty five hundred years.
 
And therefore, Siddhartha!
And therefore grant me permission of finality
bless me in the manner of the Buddhas who came before
blessed the Buddhas to be,
now, this moment.
 
At this very table,
upon this very chair
among these papers,
in a paddy field that knows
tilling, sowing and reaping,
among slogans, strikes and
the teeth of a factory wheel,
in a crowded train
carrying men and women
in their thousands
to work and back,
to secure the ultimate truth
Enlightenment,
not alone, no
but with those millions
to know together
to reach collectively
the truth
Enlightenment!

We have as individuals come far.  And we have travelled ‘back’ too.  We cannot really celebrate the former due to the latter.  The ‘why’ of this, perhaps, is contained in the above lines from Prabuddha.  This is why, thirty six years after he died, Mahagama Sekera is still very much with us, as friend, companion on necessary journey, teacher and delighter. 

[Published in the FINE Section of 'The Nation', January 13, 2013.  See also, 'Mahagama Sekera: a vision open to residency'] 

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‘With the Dawn’: A love-note penned in the Sri Lankan wilds

BOOK REVIEW

‘With the Dawn’, by Nihal Fernando and Herbert Keuneman, published by Studio Times Ltd., reviewed by Malinda Seneviratne.

There are countless melodies that can be composed with the 12 pitches of the Chromatic scale.  There are more than 12 words in the English dictionary and this alone gives sense of dimension pertaining to possible word configuration.  One might say that we have enough and more tools to describe the world to ourselves and one another.  There are times however when we all feel poor, not for lack of word but perhaps for its suffusion.  We cannot pick the correct words to describe to perfection, dimension and detail all.   Then we go silent. 

 

It is the same with painters. Color and line make for innumerable configuration but rendering is always incomplete.  Artists give us new eyes and perhaps inevitably new lies as ways, new ways of self-deception.  One would think, then, that the photographer is a more humble archivist, except that this is also an exercise that involves choices such as time of day, light-shade mix, the ‘settings’ pertaining to camera and of course post-shot play on a computer where a wide range of tools are available to re-render that which was captured. 

When a photographer has travelled a territory more extensively than an archaeologist or surveyor it is clear that he or she can make countless albums for there are innumerable ways to organize material.  It is hard to think of anyone who has traveled the length and breadth of this island as much as Nihal Fernando has done.  Neville Weeraratne in an essay titled ‘Nihal Fernando and Herbert Keuneman: a tale of two kindred souls’ says that the former ‘has seen, heard, experienced and above all understood the land, its people and their life’.  It holds for the latter too, going by that same essay and by the authoritative travel guide ‘The Handbook for the Ceylon Traveller’ which carries the signature of his life, vision, knowledge and the love he shared with Fernando for this country.   Weeraratne describes him this way: ‘His lifelong residence led to a passionate love for the island.  There is (nor was) anyone with his encyclopedic knowledge of the country in whatever the detail and in whichever the discipline.’

Weeraratne’s piece is found towards the end of an album of photographs which is also an essay and a journey, ‘With the dawn’ published by Studio Times.  From dawn to dusk is a long time.  For people like Fernando and Keuneman it’s a set of hours that can theoretically make for countless albums on countless subjects.  This collection is based on the Studio Times exhibition called ‘Wild Life ’73’’ held almost forty years ago at the Lionel Wendt Art Gallery, Colombo.  The photographs displayed were picked by Keuneman just two weeks prior to exhibition date.  That process has been described beautifully thus:

‘Fernando and Keuneman flung open the doors of the studio (Studio Times, that is, located then in the Times Building, Colombo Fort), letting the unsullied air of a quiet morning find its way into the dark corners, as they laid out the photographs on the floor.  Beggars who lived in the foyer of the building, occasionally peered in to look at the whirling images of deer and elephants, monkeys and crocodiles, jungle trees and jungle pools, birds and more birds in flight.  Herbert Keuneman walked among these black-and-white prints, picking up one, peering at the next, tossing photographs here, there, everywhere.  He cast a few aside, sorte4d others, grouped some and started writing the story of a day in the jungle…with the dawn…the birds…awake…and take off…and so it went on until the last bird flew home.’

This was long before digital cameras and ‘photoshop’ those advances that turned point-click amateurs into art photographers if they knew how to photo-edit or could obtain the services of a photo-editor.  We can flip through the pages and be mesmerized by the images.  It would take a traveler however to look at each photograph and imagine the work involved.  Nihal Fernando is well known for his patience.  He did not (and admittedly could not) depend on the insurance of post-click technology to work out the glitches that human frailty (of mind, eye and finger) spawns.

It is a black and white collection.  For this reason the photographer obviously had to work within narrower margins of error.  Color blinds at times and even makes for a lot of fudging.  Perhaps this is why even in today’s digitized world of fascination with color palettes the black and white photographer is still held in awe. 

We cannot tell if the collection was gathered, photographically, over a single day.  But this was a different age of photography and a different society working towards different objectives at a different pace and in less glittered economy.   Nihal Fernando was inspired by love.  So too, Herbert Keuneman.  Such people don’t rush.  They take their time.  It is evident in the collection, both in image and in descriptive line.

They take us from moment to moment, hour to hour, dawn to dusk as though leading us by hand, drawing attention to all that the untrained and less-used-to-loving eye would miss.  Keuneman’s economy of words is ideal complement to Fernando’s photographic poetry.  He says only what is necessary and thereby teaching that silence is an excellent travel companion and even travel guide.  There is silence, silently captured and described in whisper.  There is music here too, for Fernando makes us hear the ripple of water, the movement of wind, the call of bird, flapping of wings and thereby teaches us the language of the civilized, our ancestors who had eyes and did not babble incessantly just because they had mouths and tongues. 

‘With the Dawn’ ends ‘when the last bird flies home’.  It is a limited edition of just 1000 copies.  A different generation of photographers might think that armed with technology they could as much or better with a fraction of the effort.  They would be wrong.  Technology does not have a ‘love-function’.  It is not obtained by point-and-click on a computer screen or inserted as device in a sophisticated camera.  It comes with walking.  It comes with deep reflection.  It comes in conversations with hundreds and hundreds of ordinary people.  It comes with the dawn and takes flight in the wings of the last bird flying home.

 

[Published in the FINE Section of The Nation of January 6, 2013]

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Tragedy has rhythm, recovery too

BOOK REVIEW

‘Rhythm of the Sea’ by Ramya Chamalie Jirasinghe, published in 2007, Reviewed by Malinda Seneviratne.

How can one look at the sea, the waves and spray, the ships on the horizon, sunsets and sunrises, beach and shell when sea and wave have destroyed all or almost all?  That is a question I asked myself immediately after the Tsunami of 2004.  Then I remembered an anecdote about seafaring folk. 

A man asks a fisherman how his father, grandfather and great grandfather died and the answer on each occasion was ‘drowned at sea’.  ‘Aren’t you scared to go to sea?’ he asks again. The fisherman asks a question by way of response: ‘Where did your father die?’ The man says ‘In bed’.  ‘And where,’ the fisherman asks ‘did his father and his father before him, die?’ ‘In bed,’ he man answers.  ‘Aren’t you scared to sleep?’ Silence. 

One year after the Tsunami I went to Kalametiya, Hambantota, where the Green Movement of Sri Lanka built some 30 plus houses for families affected by the tragedy with funds collected by my sister who is domiciled in the USA.  There was a small ceremony, remembrance, planting of trees in memory of those who died, the shedding of tears.  I remember well a comment by a resident: ‘The sea took it all away, but it is the sea, again, that will yield a tomorrow’. 

Sri Lankans are resilient.  They take the blows, fall at times, but if they have life they stand up again.  And smile too.  Today, eight years later, there are still signs of the surging waves, the occasional sight of a house that’s lost its roof, doors, walls, furniture and occupants, but for the most part someone who did not know of the tragedy would be hard pressed to imagine the magnitude of what transpired on December 26, 2004.  Sri Lankans would know, though, for minutes after the tragedy the entire population, almost, was galvanized into a monumental rescue and relief operation, not by command but volition.  To those who know that the country turns into a dansala twice a year and are aware of a cultural norm to set aside difference to celebrate joy and offer strength and presence in times of sorrow, this would not come as a surprise. 

Everyone who lost someone or something has a story to tell about the Tsunami.  Everyone who knows someone who lost someone or something has a story to tell too.  When tragedy is of such proportion as was seen in the last days of that December it is next to impossible to gather all the stories or even read them all should such an exercise be completed.  What can be done is to collate a set of stories that capture that overwhelming and word-robbing time.  This was the modest task that Ramya Chamalie Jirasinghe set herself a few years after the Tsunami.  ‘Rhythm of the Sea’ is the result of that exercise, a project sponsorted by the Hambantota District Chamber of Commerce.  It is, naturally, a work which required the support of various individuals, all of whom are mentioned.  It is a book of text and image, Ramya handling the first while Denise Militzer (a WUSC University volunteer with the Ruhuna Rural Womens Organization in Hambantota) providing the latter, excellent pictures which contain an epic story of human endeavor.

Hambantota, Ramya says, is the backdrop against which ‘the lives of people and the progress of events following the tsunami’.  The book covers the moment and the aftermath, the grief and reconciliation with the fact of tragedy, the determination and tenderness of the citizenry who gathered themselves to shoulder the greater part of the relief and recovery effort and the largesse of the world that poured into Sri Lanka.  She mentions the institutional arrangement that managed relief operations, treating in passing the weaknesses therein and the opportunities squandered, applauding however the early work of the Centre for National Operations for averting in the first 72 hours what could have developed into a humanitarian disaster. 

She has missed, however, the ‘relief-hordes’ that arrived in numbers that India and other countries did not entertain, riding on tragedy to engage in proselytization of a kind that their own countries would never allow had the ‘gifters’ been, for example, of the Islamic faith.  Money poured in, but it had to be channeled either through the Government or I/NGOs.  The dollar/Euro hungry NGO operators were quick-footed enough to re-invent themselves as disaster-management experts.  There were bucks made in the process. Big bucks. 

But the focus of Ramya’s task was different.  Hambantota was the location and what happened there is what this book is mainly about.  A lot of painstaking research has been done in picking up the main strands of the tragedy and the post-tragedy recovery process.  It is the little things that cause most vexation.  Like the fact that it all happened on a public holiday.  Like the fact that the Tsunami didn’t differentiate between house and administrative building.  Ramya details how these were made negligible and how selfless courage and human generosity rose above ethnic and religious affiliation, and how the worst elements of human nature were overcome by the human spirit, which she demonstrates ‘tipped the balance’. 

There was loss.  Indescribable.  And yet, Ramya traces with splendid sensitivity the nuances of that fundamental aspect of tragedy.  There is enough basic information in this book to give the reader a sense of the numbers and the magnitude of the disaster as well as the resources available and secured and how they were deployed.  The narratives of key officials, community leaders and ordinary people are deftly woven into the text not as embellishment but as necessary complement.  Indeed, these narratives can be read (as they should and are) as the core of the overall human effort to stand up after taking a terrible blow from natural processes that was beyond their power to stop.    

Post-disaster work is not about providing food and water, medicines and medical attention, or providing shelter.  The magnitude of the disaster necessitated a rebuilding of a kind that one expects after the end of a war.  All of it happened from scratch. Literally.  The work moved from immediate humanitarian relief to comprehensive rebuilding of lives and livelihoods, the recovery of economic activity and re-building of institutions.  ‘Rhythm of the Sea’ shows how Hambantota did it, how life was infused back into desolate landscapes, how hope emerged from a coastline that had turned into a cemetery.   

Ramya brings all her well-established literary skills to turn a compelling story into one which inspires readers to recognize the vast stores of human energy, creativity and determination, and transform inspiration into something tangible and lasting. 

She collects the uncollected, i.e. things that the untrained and less-sensitive eye passes over.  ‘The conch shell collection’ is a case in point, the details of which I hold back for Ramya describes it best.  These are all real people with real names and real lives. And real losses of course.  Magnitude tends to obliterate name and turn it into number.  That’s necessary too because we are talking of vast amounts of money, provisions and personnel involved in helping vast numbers of displaced and distraught people.  And yet, it is the focus on the ‘real’ that makes this book different from other Tsunami accounts. 

Eight years have passed.  Ramya’s account was published in 2007, just three years after the Tsunami.  Even then, the transformation achieved was remarkable, especially (as Ramya observes) considering the strange incapacities demonstrated by the USA in dealing with what ‘Katrina’ left behind (or took away).  Hambantota is a different town, a different district now, clearly not only because of the post-tsunami work.  But the Hambantota recovery story is not uncommon to other coastal towns and districts. 

‘Rhythm of the Sea’ calls out for other narratives and narration, not just because it is good to remember things but for all the lessons learnt, not least of all the inhumanity that tragedy spawns but more than that the immense reserves of human goodness and the dignity that no wave, however tall, can crush. 

[Published in the FINE Section of 'The Nation', December 23, 2012]

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