In the name of 'The Father'

 

Portrait of Gamini Seneviratne, painted by the late Kulanatha Senadheera 

Almost four years ago, not too long before Galle Face was re-named and the word ‘aragalaya’ came to dominate conversation, a father offered some advice to his daughter who had been agitating at Independence Square for a few days and informed him that the plan was to march to Galle Face.

The father could not stop her even if he wanted to. He did not want to. He knew enough about agitation, the way things could snowball into dimensions unexpected and the possibility of violence. He said as much.

‘It would be foolish to think that there’s nothing to worry about. Things can get dangerous. If things come to a head, it’s not necessarily the leaders who get killed. I am scared because I love you. But also because I love you, I will not say “don’t go.” History could be made and if that’s the history you want to make, I would want you to be a part of it. For this, you have my blessings. Just make sure you have enough water with you at all times.’

Something along those lines. I was that father and the girl was my daughter. I remember remembering when I uttered those words something my own father told me back in bheeshanaya times.

‘When we marched to Kandy from Peradeniya to protest against the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, we were ready for anything. Anything included getting beaten or killed. But that ‘anything’ somehow was nothing compared to the ‘anything’ that might happen to you or your friends.’

Some of my friends were arrested. Some were tortured. Some were killed. My father didn’t say ‘no.’ At the time I did not know and probably could not know anything of his anxieties, but in March or early April 2022, I knew. I think I told my girl this as well.

Such moments don’t come along all the time, although that particular moment stretched into days, weeks and months. At one point she confessed that she doesn’t know much about many things and that she ought to read a lot more. Today she reads a lot about political philosophy and we have highly stimulating conversations about ‘old’ thinkers and their continuing relevance, discussions which enlighten me much more than they do her.

My father kept his anxieties to himself. He may have shared them with my late mother. My mother, for her part, was as reticent about such things. I do remember something she said a few days before I entered university: ‘there’s no point telling you not to get involved in student politics — you are the kind who would — but be careful.’ That was all. I can only imagine the dimensions of her anxieties and even suffering, for mothers are somehow different from fathers, although they are both parents to rebellious children.

I know more about fatherhood but of course my knowledge is limited by the particular ways of my daughters, their convictions and agitation, and the risks they take whether or not they are aware of their true dimensions.

There must have been times when I was livid about my parents’ imperfections, but today if I am asked, I probably wouldn’t be able to name even one. Anyway, even if I could, I would not. This is because I am well aware of my imperfections and more than this I know my girls understand the way and why-not of my fathering, even if they may not forgive all that I did that I should not have and all that I didn’t do that I ought to have done.

It doesn’t mean there are no regrets. Of course there are! Wisdom comes late. Too late, sometimes. There is one consolation though, and this I told her when she turned 25 a couple of days ago: ‘The only consolation is that you’ve acquired so much more by yourself than what we’ve given you to understand and deal with what life and the world tosses your way.’

She’s far away. Too far away for the assurances that presence and immediacy make possible. Too far away ‘to watch over.’ My father may have felt the same way but unlike me he never mentioned such things. I might have wondered why and even been annoyed about the distances he kept in such things, but after all these years I can say with confidence that he was wise. Wiser than I could ever be with regard to my daughters. But I do remember him ‘reading’ my palm one day and saying ‘you have an incredible ability to remain calm in the midst of all the tempests you create, but it drives people around you crazy!’ I remember saying, ‘that’s not written on my palm; you are just saying what you think you know about me!’ I remember both of us and everyone around us laughing. Today, I think that’s the closest he came to blurting out his anxieties about me.

I can’t keep things to myself and this may (or may not) have cost my daughters. But to the girl who turned 25 I simply said, ‘I’ve held you close all these years, but you’ve held me closer, and believe me, that’s the greatest blessing.’

We love. We just love. There’s nothing more we can do or give. This I say for myself and, in a way, in the name of my father. Gamini Seneviratne. Eighty eight years old, almost. Impossible. And yet present, always. In his own way. As is his right.

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. malindadocs@gmail.com.

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For Sirajudin Mohamed Nishmi, wherever he may be

 

He was referred to as Nismi, although the name was Nishmi. Some may have used ‘sh’ instead of ’s’ but few, if any, knew his full name. Sirajudin Mohamed Nishmi. We don’t know how he spelled the name. Maybe it was ‘Nizmi.’

Anyway, he was an engineering student at the University of Peradeniya in the turbulent late-eighties. He was more than that. Or less, depending on your political and ideological persuasions.  A student leader. That cannot be disputed.  

Nishmi, by most accounts, is one of thousands ‘disappeared’ during the bheeshanaya. How it happened, where it happened and when it happened, we might never know. His story hasn’t been written either, although there are various accounts of that time which refer to his involvement.

He was the voice of what was at the time called the Action Committee of the university. This was a time when formal student councils didn’t exist or rather were not allowed to exist. Batches of all faculties ‘elected’ representatives. There were no formal elections. Someone would propose and someone else would second and that was all. Organised groups, such as students who were JVPers, would make sure that their ‘people’ by and large became batch-representatives and thereafter faculty-representatives. The Action Committees would decide for the general student body. These decisions, it was pretty clear, came ‘from the top,’ i.e. in alignment with the political interests of the party.

I don’t know if Nishmi was actually a member of the JVP student organisation, the Socialist Students Union. He bossed, in time, the Action Committee. This was sometime in 1987 or 1988. He was in the Engineering Faculty, as mentioned, and I was in the Arts Faculty. He was JVP and I was not. He was in the Action Committee, I was not. He was a student boss, I was just a student, just another recipient of boss-decisions.

Nishmi’s moment probably came after the then Convenor of the Inter University Student, Ranjithan Gunaratnam, ‘moved’ to the higher echelons of the party. That probably coincided with a long period of detention along with dozens of student activists in May 1987. Nishmi was charismatic. He was an excellent orator.

This became clear to me in December 1986 when he was one of two students, the other being Rev Athureliye Rathana Thero, who addressed students in the midst of a token boycott of lectures to commemorate the killing of a student at Peradeniya in 1976. It was the ‘Weerasooriya Commemoration,’ at which Prof Desmond Mallikaarachchi also spoke. All three were top notch speakers, Desmond of course being the one with greater substance and by quite a margin too. Nishmi was less fire than Rev Rathana Thero, but he touched hearts.

Two years later, then the universities reopened after several months, the Action Committee immediately declared a boycott and the entire student body at Peradeniya was asked to attend a meeting at the Medical Faculty. I can’t remember how long it lasted, but the meeting was moved to the gymnasium. That’s where I first witnessed Nishmi’s ability to sway an audience.  

After several months at home, students were not too keen on boycotting lectures. National politics obviously bled into the universities, but the general feeling was one of getting the exams over with and moving out. Nishmi changed all that. He spoke for two hours. Off the cuff. He was logical. He made sense. Of course this doesn’t mean that his analysis was spotless. He inserted ‘facts’ that were useful and left out those which would compromise his ‘line.’

At the end of it, someone came up with a ‘declaration’. It was read out and approved by a show of hands. A forest of hands, actually. I was in a corner. I know I didn’t raise my hand. I know that Dhammika Amarakoon who was standing next to me didn’t either. We were not noticed. We didn’t count. From then onwards it was ‘everyone for the student movement,’ never mind that ‘student movement’ was nothing but a front for the JVP. Those who didn’t go along, went home. Those who remained but objected went silent.

That year, 1987, and the following one too, stretched. The universities were either closed or when open lectures were boycotted. I didn’t see Nishmi much, except at the WUS canteen or thereabouts because the room occupied (probably illegally) by the Action Committee was nearby. But one day he did make the long climb up to Marcus Fernando Hall. I was surprised that he knew me and even more surprised that he had come to speak with me.

We were playing cricket. He knew I was an English medium student. He started talking about ‘The English Medium,’ and I cut him off, explaining that I just happened to be studying in English and that I didn’t really identify with the political leanings of that particular segment of students. Then he cut me off, saying that this was not what he was talking about.

Nishmi simply said that ‘we’ (I think he meant ‘the student movement’ but was generous enough, at least in his mind, to include me) should get the English medium students involved in student politics. We spoke briefly. He needed to mobilise students. Recruitment was probably second-nature to him. It was not my thing. But I was struck by his persistence and his charm. Nishmi had a winning smile; more winning than his rhetoric.

Nishmi got lost in a revolution that was lost before it began, at least according to my analysis. The defeat of the JVP didn’t make me sad. The victory of the most tyrannical regime we have known since Independence didn’t make me happy either. I just thought of those who were killed for no reason at all. Many were innocent. Nishmi was not, at least not to the extent that the party he belonged to was not. I like to think that his intentions were honourable, but I have no way of telling.

All I know is that I was sad, even though I did not know the details of his fate. There were others like that. Is it because he was known and I had the opportunity to speak a few words with him? I don’t know. But he was among the better men in our student days.

A friend who too belonged to the party told me that he had once met someone who looked like Nishmi. That person had Nishmi’s signature half-grin, he said. He had merely tapped my friend and said ‘Malayaa..’ Acknowledgment, and nothing more.

What happened to Nishmi? Maybe he is still alive, using a different name, doing things very different from those that were bread and butter for his activist avatar. Time can change a lot of things. Maybe I might be less inclined to be positive about Nishmi, who can tell? I give him the benefit of the doubt.  

He comes to mind off and on. And I wonder what went wrong. That time, those people, myself, the circumstances; we cannot bring it all back and do it right. But we are in this time. We could do better. Nishmi would, I tell myself.

This article was first published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday.' 

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. malindadocs@gmail.com

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To seek and cherish the land that isn't mine but ours

 

 

It’s a sociological and political term, this thing called ‘post-independence.’ There are books with titles that include the term. It is uttered often by politicians and of course academics when they talk about all things under the sun and on this earth over and under the feet of us Sri Lankans that belong to all and none (or some).

Mahagama Sekera owned this island, this nation. He owned it because he never claimed it. And because he owned it, he could bequeath it to anyone he liked. He picked everyone:

vaesi vasinaa ahasa api
muthu bandinaa muhuda api
mini dilenaa polova api
siri lankaa ratama api
 
Translatable thus:
We are the sky that rains
We are the ocean that crafts pearls
We are the earth that of glittering gems
We (make) the entire country that is Sri Lanka

I did not think of Sekera or this particular understanding of our country. Kasun De Silva did. In an Independence Day message posted on Facebook, along with one of his many photographs that capture a landscape and a moment in ways that takes my breath away (and probably that of many others as well), Kasun offered the following:

‘Happy Independence Day to Sri Lanka, whose real values are given freely to those who seek and cherish..!’

I like the insertion of the word ‘real’ here. It implies there are values that are not real. Fake. What they are and what’s ‘real’ is of course subjective, but what Kasun may be saying is that those that speak of history, living heritage and lived lives that are wholesome constitute that which is wholesome, endearing and gives pride and meaning to us all.

Where are they? They exist not upon surfaces to be scooped up callously, not in places easily accessed. They are not for casual collection. They are obtained, Kasun says, only by seeking. Therefore they are hidden or disguised. This doesn’t mean they are in remote places, off-grid and enchanting.

Yes, you will see value in such places. Flip through Kasun’s photo albums and you will understand what I mean. You could also just close your eyes, place a finger on the map of Sri Lanka and just go there. With eyes and heart open of course.

Sekera didn’t tell us how to find that which is sought, but he described people and places where truth might reside in his final and according to some yet-incomplete (as in draft-stage) lengthy poetic narrative, Prabuddha.

In the manner of a bodhisatva requesting ‘niyatha vivarana’ or conclusive blessing, Prabuddha speaks to the Buddha Siddhartha Gautama:

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!

Again, we have the notion of the collective. The all-of-us. The all-of-us in all places high and low, but particularly in the glossed over and forgotten places where political economy burns without fire, obtains organs surreptitiously, privileges profit over labour, insults and humiliates, but can never steal or murder resolve.

That which this country is, that which we are, that which we belong to and own, needs to be sought and obtained. This is a precondition for cherishing.

Can we define it? I don’t think so. The sacred is a secret jealously guarded. We are offered signs so we may read, extrapolate and obtain ‘the real.’ It might require us to move along or among the five aggregates, the pancakkhandha, namely rupa (form/body), vedana (sensation/feeling), sanna (perception/recognition), sankhara (mental formations/volition) and vinnana (consciousness). The short hand would be ‘with eyes open,’ ready to perceive, ready to dive through appearances and dwell in those less-seen and less-talked-of things in discourses pertaining to independence, pre-independence and post-independence.

I am sitting at a table at home. From here, I can see a cloudless sky. There are birds I can hear and a few I can see. Flowers amid layers of differently hued greens. Sunlight that has made peace with canopies and comes to rest in bits and pieces on grass and leaves, flower pots and window panes. I haven’t seen pearls in the seas I have visited. My earths have not yielded precious stones. And yet, I have known rain and other things that are precious albeit intangible, in places like those Kasun captures and shares and places we both have visited separately.

I seek. I do cherish the truths and values I have in my frailty discerned. There’s so much more to find. So much more seeking to be done. They are free, and that's a blessing. Perhaps I will cherish this land that is not mine but ours even more deeply in the days to come, the years I have left.

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. malindadocs@gmail.com

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Rebekah Pieris and her worlds made of fragments

 

'The Commons Cofffeehouse' down Flower Road is sometimes too busy a place to notice certain things. Quite apart from the comings and goings of regular and random clientele, there always seems to be something else happening. Decorations are put up for various festive holidays, then taken down. The furniture is rearranged. Indeed, there’s the occasional refurbishment as well. Posters are put up to announce a play or musical. They are removed only to be replaced by posters announcing some other event.  

I didn’t really notice the fact that a team of young people were setting up an exhibition of paintings. Maybe my mind was on other things; others may have been more curious. I might have not known, at least not for a while, unless a friend, Jehan Pieris, told me about it.  

So I took a look. They had just started their work. One or two had already been placed on a wall. The young men were trying to figure out where the next one ought to be placed. There were some paintings, all framed, lying on one of the tables and some on a couch. And a young girl with some painting instrument, perhaps a pen or maybe a marker, diligently ‘working’ on one of the ‘works.’

Strange. I had thought that the work of the artist is done by the time a painting is ready to be exhibited. I was intrigued and told Jehan that I would like to interview her.  I was introduced to her, Rebekah, Jehan’s daughter. I told her I’d be around and asked her to tell me when she was ready. When she was, I wasn’t, but I promised to come look for her once I was done.

Rebekah Pieris had been doodling since she was little. Apparently her father also liked to draw. There was ‘canvas’ wherever she went. Like most children she too used the walls and her parents indulged. She could literally spend hours drawing short lines, rendering with black on white, the universe of her imagination or the world as she saw it. ‘It was therapeutic for me. I just kept going on and on for hours.’ She didn’t plan or think too much, apparently. ‘The hand does its thing,’ she simply said.

‘I always had a vivid imagination. For me, it’s just laying out feelings on canvas, my experiences, what I’ve seen and extracted, but not necessarily intentionally; it just comes out in my art. She had taken some formal lessons at Cora Abraham’s art school and had offered Art for her ALs before moving to an Art School in Norway, Seljord. Thereafter she’s been reading for an art degree, ‘for a long time,’ she said, adding, ‘with multiple breaks!’ 

When she was younger she had been interested in drawing portraits. ‘That was the time I was looking at Uncle Harry’s work.’ ‘Uncle Harry’ is actually her granduncle, one of the founders of the renowned Colombo ’43 Group and considered as the finest Asian portraitists of the 20th century working in a European style.  

‘While practicing portraits, I would get bored easily. I realised that I don’t really enjoy realism. I like a more fragmented view, leaving interpretation to the viewer, instead of giving a flat out this-is-what-it-is. I wanted to make it different, mixing abstract with pop art, maintaining that mess, creating organised chaos.’

The process was and is essentially experimental. Rebekah was to make it her own, but quickly interjected, ‘you might not recognise it and indeed it certainly can’t be what I see or paint, but that’s alright.’

Where does the inspiration come from, i.e. apart from her vivid imagination and determination to fragment or, as the case may be, extract from the ‘intact’ that which constitute it, the innumerable fragments? According to Rebekah, she is inspired by Frida Kahlo and Salvador Dali, but offers, ‘my approach would align more with cubists and fragmented approaches.’

She also mentioned Pala Pothupitiya. ‘He advises me a lot. He always tells a story. His work is political commentary. Mine is not. I am about expressions and emotions; my own little doodles in an extract of time.’

I don’t understand art and know nothing of artists and styles, so she explained, as though to a complete novice: ‘Imagine a picture of someone on a glass; now imagine it being shattered. Things get shifted.’

Yes, everything is a bit askew. We are all ‘askew,’ it occurred to me. Our eyes and even minds are trained to see neat composites. We are conditioned to caress surfaces. We don’t often read the back stories and are completely ignorant of the ‘deep down.’ Maybe that’s how we manage to suffer the agonies of life and indeed our very existence as human beings and collectives. We get disturbed by things that are ajar or appear to be so. Well, what if that’s how things are?

Such thoughts crossed my mind. Rebekah reminded me, ‘the world and life have multiple dimensions; even 3D art would be limiting.’

From art and painting, she moved to life and philosophy, which of course are not different planets but co-exist and are even entwined.

‘I don’t like to be told what to do or what to think. So the question comes to me, “why not break all the rules?”

She claims that her art changes each season. That’s probably because her interests are varied. ‘I read all kinds of books, all the time. I just want to keep my mind busy. Science has always interested me.  I think the Cubists were probably inspired by science. Einstein’s relativism, for example.  

Rebekah says she never plans. Well, she didn’t when she was a kid doodling on walls either. So that has remained all these years. But she explained why: ‘art becomes raw and honest when it’s not planned.’

Speaking of the exhibition, Rebekah said it was a speed exercise. ‘I gave myself a couple of hours for each piece. There’s no time to think and I don’t want to think either. I just let it happen. It’s fun for me. There’s something happening in the mind and it evolves. The end product however lives for a long time. I don’t hold on to my work once I am done. It’s just a moment in time, anyway. Things change, I change, everything is constantly evolving. I am not sentimental.’ She attributes this thinking in part to Pala, who encouraged her to ‘walk away.’

‘Pala told me to walk away from the pieces so I wouldn’t overdo them. His intent hadn’t much to do with sentimentality I guess.’

There are others who have inspired her. She mentioned Francis Bacon and Edvard Munch. I knew of the latter and his ‘The Scream’ but never knew that Bacon painted. Rebekah showed me some of the portraits by the former. She was quite excited to show me one of his self-portraits where the artist portrays himself in semi-mangled ways. This was when I got a sense of what she had told me about fragments and fragmenting.

Rebekah held her first solo exhibition at the Lionel Wendt. It was called ‘Ephesus.’ That was a time she had been trying to understand the concept of God: ‘it had nothing to do with the exhibition, but I thought I would give it that name; it was a transitional time in my life.’

She lives and works in the UK. Apparently she had spent 10 years as a professional bartender, having attended the European Bartender School. Now she’s a supervisor who leads a team in sales related to high-end supplements and healthcare. 

‘I sell, but I don’t market myself or my art!’ They do sell, though but the marketing is mostly through word of mouth. She said that even the one instagram post related to her exhibition was done just three days before the event.

She clearly has a preference for acrylics and markers: ‘it’s mostly acrylic and if it’s on paper I use ink.’ The drawings that adorn the walls of ‘The Commons’ are all black-and-white affairs.

‘Black is what I always wore. Black to me is a relaxing colour. I have of course experimented with colour a little bit but my strength is black.’

Speaking of the exhibition, she said ‘his particular collection has an undersea vibe. I am leaning towards the submerged. But then again, I don’t want to name it. Maybe I will explore shipwrecks soon. My dad and I are both divers!”

She revealed that she maintains what she calls ‘a doodle diary.’ It’s her mind in a book. Her paintings are, by the same token, diary-entries.

The interview was done. She went back to her work and I to mine. A couple of hours later, as I was walking out, I saw Rebekah once again dabbing on one of the paintings. This time it was dots. She spoke while ‘dotting.’

‘So you keep working on these?’

‘Yes, until I am done. That’s when I know I can walk away.’

Her work remains. They capture the viewer who could theoretically caress or dive into the canvas  and make what he or she will of dots, lines and their peculiar configurations. Until they too can walk away, Rebekah might say. 

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When Mahagama Sekera visited Sri Sānghikarāmaya

 

I am not sure if there was a dancing class in Grade 1 at Royal College. There was dancing in Grade 2. The dancing room was between two of the Grade 2 classes, if I remember right. We had ‘art’ from Grade 1 to at least Grade 5. Music there was, at least from Grade 2 until Grade 6.

Ms Obeysekera was the dancing teacher, Ms Bandaranayake taught music and I think the class teacher had to handle art. The legendary Lionel Ranwala was our music teacher when I was in Grade 6. Everyone had to go to his music room, even those who could not sing and had no sense of rhythm. Like myself.  

I can’t remember what he taught. I can’t remember learning anything. The only thing I remember is the song that began thus: ‘anna balan sanda ran thetiyen sudu seetha gangul galanā (Look! From the golden lunar dish flows cool white streams [and thereby] quells all sorrows of the heart).’

No, I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t know the context. I liked the melody. And I could manage to hold the tune, but only just.

That was fifty years ago. That was the year that the lyricist passed away. Well, back then I didn’t know who wrote the song either.

Mahagama Sekera. It was from a play he wrote and produced, Kundala Kesi, based on an Indian folktale. The original rendition was by Ben Sirimanne and Trilicia Gunawardena

It was decades later that I actually read Sekera, clearly a colossus in 20th Century Sinhala literature.  A poet, lyricist, film-maker, playwright and philosopher, Sekera left behind a treasure trove of words. He did not leave us 50 years ago for there can be no conversation on Sinhala literature without him being mentioned, not in in-passing courtesy but for his centrality to the subject.

He lives also outside of academia and literary circles in the imagination of ordinary people living ordinary lives because his words unlock the doors of routine and learned truths. He sheds light on ordinary things in ways that that the gaze is persuaded to pause and the mind encouraged to wonder if appearances tell or deceive or simply hide deeper truths.

Sekera’s work is strewn with literary and philosophical nuggets. They are often raw but when strung together they are absolutely elegant necklaces capable of transfixing the mind. Indeed, thinking about him right now, I am convinced that any random line on any random page in any of his books could inspire hours of reflection .

He arrives in unexpected ways at unexpected moments. There was, for example, a moment at our village temple, Sri Sānghikarāmaya of Kudamāduwa, when I recalled a line from ‘Prabuddha,’ where the main protagonist wanders around the Ruvanveliseya, having noticed a single star in the sky. He was looking for that one spot from where his gaze could ‘place’ the star on the pinnacle. He did or rather Sekera made him find it, and then commented, dipena tama dhansinā, the last line of the gāthā recited following the lighting of a lamp, a call for light that dispels the darkness [of illusion].

There were stars that night or rather the full moon was too bright to see stars in the sky. In any case, the dimensions and landscape was nothing like what one sees in and around Ruwanveliseya. Small. Trees. One could walk every square inch and not find a single spot to align the eye, pinnacle and star. And that’s when Sekera came up. That’s when poetry arrived. That’s when imagination was unleashed. And that’s when a wandering mind was able to stop, reflect and obtain serenity.

Mahagama Sekera
in a geometric stupor
circumnavigated the Maha Seya
but even as he retraced
footprints of the long gone
his eyes were on the pinnacle
and the planet Jupiter

Sekera eventually found
the sweet spot of convergence
made star rest on pinnacle,
beheld, stopped and uttered
dipena tama dhansinā
and called for gloom-dispelling light

Here in Kudamāduwa
the Sri Sānghikarāmaya
has not the sprawl nor stature
between pinnacle and sky
the boughs of the towering bo tree
makes canopy, offers shade, interrupts

Mahagama Sekera comes through
in a quivering hand a book of verse
a chant lingering in his eyes
smiles me to a stop

And then there was light.

Even now, sitting in a coffee shop by the High Level Road, in Maharagama, with noontime sun offering just glare as vehicles move in both directions and the commercial establishments are awfully uninspiring, I can still go to Anuradhapura. I can return to our Sri Sānghikarāmaya in Kudamāduwa. It is night, right now, at 11.59 am on Independence Day (as I write). There’s a full moon. It is a golden platter from which springs cooling waters capable of quelling darkness and washing away sorrow. 

Fifty years ago, I learned a song. Fifty years later, the man who wrote the song sings it to me.  I still can’t sing, but in the voiceless rendition in my mind is perfect. No one is listening, but someone may have heard.  

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. malindadocs@gmail.com

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The blood of others that stain our minds

 

Stella Sanford, in her book ‘How to Read Beauvoir,’ contends that one of the main themes of Simone De Beauvoir’s ‘The Blood of Others’ is the relation between the free individual and ‘the historically unfolding world of brute facts and other men and women.’  Deirdre Bair, in a biography of the French existentialist, published in 1990, argues that Beauvoir’s intention was to express the paradox of freedom experienced by an individual and the ways in which others, perceived by the individual as objects, were affected by his actions and decisions.

So there are brute facts unfolding before our eyes, as we write, as we get from A to be, as we go about our business, as we love and hate, and so on. There are others in that ‘unfolding world.’ Men and women, children too, whose names we may or may not know. We act. There are consequences. Sometimes it’s a ripple or less, sometimes a wave and then, at times, it is a tornado or worse that we unleash, knowingly or unknowingly.

A word would do. A some, ‘hardly even noticed,’ act would do. Look-away is good enough. Silence too. There are consequences.

But what if those consequences are tragic? What if something said or done or ignored precipitates tragedies or has the potential to push things in such directions? Someone might say, ‘look what you've done!’  Someone might ask, ‘are you happy now?’

Well, there are countless ways of brushing it off. One can even do so philosophically, ‘if it’s good to do, what’s wrong in talking about it?’ We have heard the Sinhala equivalent often enough: ‘karanna honda nam kiwwahama moko?’

Self righteousness helps. All kinds of arguments can be made.

It’s for the larger good, so others will think twice. It’s just so that the relevant entities will be forced to inquire and, if wrongdoing is established, will punish perpetrators and better still put in place preventive mechanisms. For the social good, then.

A voice in the head might mumble, ‘hmm….really?’ but voices in heads can be easily, happily and conveniently ignored. If not, they can be drowned by simply increasing the volume of the assertions.  

But why bother? Why be worried about voices in the head, the prick of conscience etc when, in the end, it’s someone else who has to deal with consequences that are less about whatever that person has done than about what the philosopher said about it. Blood of others. Not ours. Their problem, not ours.  

Somewhere, beyond the arc of eye and mind, there are lives that are wrecked. Somewhere a child is seeing her world come apart. Somewhere a household has been turned into a torture chamber where the instruments of inflicting pain and suffering are words, silences and abandonment. Somewhere there’s a garden full of flowers that eyes will no longer notice. There’s food that cannot excite taste buds.

There may be a father, perhaps retired or ill, who is crushed to the point of shedding tears for the first time in many decades. A mother may be signing, trembling uncontrollably. Things that never happened to them had indeed come to pass, let’s say. A child is confused and perturbed by the uproar that has intruded on a world made of known, predictable and mostly happy things. One day he or she will know. One day he or she will be told.

Consequences. They often materialise far away. Sometimes they don’t materialise for they lacerate the mind. There’s no bleeding. No blood. No sign of wound or hurt. Therefore it can even be assumed that there were no consequences at all.

But ‘far away’ is a safe bet. So far away you just can’t see. All the better, for you can assume there’s nothing to see anyway. You could, moreover, argue that thinking about possible consequences is an exercise without an end. It can make you numb. It can cripple. Correct. And yet, there are times, there are moments, there are incidents, there are things in this world of ever-unfolding brute facts and unfathomable miseries when it doesn’t take much to see that A will most likely precipitate B and B will snowball into C and so on until an F down the line will be so tragic and so ugly that you may want to close your eyes.

Guilt. It can be wished away. Most times. Not always. Blood stains of the mind, so to speak, are invisible. The mind that generated word or action which in turn caused blood to ‘spill’ will itself be stained.  

It is not a weight light enough to live with.

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Anjana Ariyarathna's time-travel machine

 

It is quite likely that there are people, even millions of them, who have never made paper boats. Or paper airplanes for that matter. Not everyone lives in places where winds are kite-worthy. Some do, though.

I have never made a kite. That was the preserve of my elder brother. Come kite season, the house would be cluttered with kite-making material. I helped him make them airborne. Once they were up and faraway, I would be allowed to hold the string, but always under his supervision. I adhered to the strict conditions he imposed on me. For the most part, though, I delighted in watching brightly coloured kites of different shapes floating over rooftops and tree lines.

I’ve made paper airplanes. The rise, dip and swerve of paper airplanes never failed to enchant me.  Not all of them flew. Adjustments had to be made. I knew that if I got it half-way right, hours of pleasure would follow. There were occasions when I did get it right.

Paper boats were of a different order. I suppose any body of water would do, even a bathtub or basin, but in my case it was the rainwater drain that skirted my maternal grandparents’ house in Kurunegala.

Rain, at times, was spectacular, especially if there was wind as well. The rain would come as waves. It would sweep across the landscape. Loud and insistent. Typically the drain would be full of fast moving water. Paper boat time.

So my brother, sister and I would make paper boats, colour them and even make tiny flags which we stuck on them. We placed them gently and watched them speed away. We were ship captains, all of us. We rushed from room to room, window to window, cheering our ‘ships’ on, until they floundered in the large pool that formed where the drain ended.

For those few minutes or hour or two, we sailed high seas, braved enormous waves and terrible storms. We were sailors.

It all came back to me yesterday when Anjana Ariyarathna, my friend and sometime colleague at Phoenix Ogilvy showed me an album of photographs which he had posted on Shutterstock. Anjana is not a professional photographer. It’s one of the many things he does for the pure joy of it all. A Senior Art Director who has worked in advertising for almost 15 years, Anjana is more a painter than a photographer. He shares his experiments with brush, colour and canvas on his YouTube channel ‘Kandyan Art.’

Not being a student of photography myself, I couldn’t really go too far away from ‘hmm’ and ‘lassanai (pretty),’ but one capture stopped me. It was of a little boy seated on an oruwa, probably on the beach, watching a boat out at sea in Trincomalee.

What captured me was the boy and the boat. What thoughts crossed his mind, I wondered. I wondered if he, as I had done a long time ago, imagined himself as the captain of a splendid ship.  

I know of a boy Kumara Bandarage Chamod Pasindu Dilshan who studies at the Mercmarine Seafarer Training Institute (MSTI). An only child, his parents had wanted him to get a degree in Information Technology. A quiet, sober, obedient boy, Pasindu had agreed. It was later that the parents had found out that the boy wasn’t too keen on IT. He wanted to be on a ship.

Apparently, that particular seed had been planted in his imagination by the older brothers of school friends who worked on ships. He had learned about ships and seamen through YouTube videos. Most significantly, that early interest had been rekindled when he took the train to Dehiwala to attend lectures. He would see the ships off the Colombo coast. He convinced his parents that he should pursue his oceanic dream. Eventually they had agreed.

A few days ago. Young Pasindu returned from his first voyage. It was a six-month internship that was part of the degree program. He had tales to tell.

A little boy in Trincomalee happened to be looking at the sea just as a boat was passing. Someone who he didn’t know at all, happened to be passing by. That stranger saw the boy and the boat. The boat was at sea. The boy was probably in the clouds. Some dreams can be captured, it occurred to me. Some dreams come true too, I know.

My seaman fantasy died when the monsoon was done. It was resurrected when it rained again. Died again. I never went out to sea. I didn’t fly kites, but loved watching them. I have watched the lights of ships off the Western coast on certain nights. I’ve wondered what they carry and where they are going.

There are kids, boys and girls, who dream longer and whose determinations don’t go dry. They give life to the notions of exploration and adventure. They go to far away places. They sail towards magical horizons, they fly to splendid skies. I am thankful that they do. And I am grateful to my friend Anjana Ariyarathna for allowing me to use his time-travel machine, and taking me to distant places that are either from a long ago that’s unreachable or a mystical space I seldom thought of visiting.

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Mahagama Sekera: the book of verse and the [glass of] wine

 

[published in the Daily News, January 15, 2025] 

The late Pundit Amaradeva would frequently refer to his friend and collaborator, Mahagama Sekera, during concerts. Inevitably he would draw from the song ‘මීවිතයි ගී පොතයි (the book of verse and the [glass of] wine),’ which was written by Sekera, to pay homage of sorts to their partnership. And everyone applauds, typically. In

The following lines about Amaradeva, written by another prominent lyricist, Bandula Nanayakkarawasam, resurfaced around the time the celebrated singer passed away and they came to me last night as I thought of what I could write of Sekera today, on the eve of his 48th death anniversary. 

 

ගම අමතක වීද ඔහුගෙන් විමසන්න

නගරය මග හැරුනිද ඔහු සොයා යන්න

රට අමතක වීද ඔහු ඇති බව අදහන්න

ගහ-කොළ, ඉර-හඳ, ඇළ-දොළ, සමුදුර, කුරුළු-ගී

ඈ නෙක දියදම් අරුම නොපෙනී නොඇසී ගියේද

ඔහු ඇසි දිසි මානයේ රැඳෙන්න

මේ පුංචි කොදෙව්වේ, මව් දෙරණේ

මේ සියල්ල ඔහුය 

 

‘If you’ve forgotten the village, ask him

If you are lost in a city, go find him

If you forgot the nation, believe that he lives

The trees, the sun and moon, the ocean, bird song…

These and other enchanting things……..

should you not see them, should you not hear

Go stand before him, stay within the circle of his gaze.

In this tiny island, in our motherland

He is all these things.'

 

Sure. It works. And yet, it occurred to me, that if the above lines were read without knowing who wrote them or about whom, the reader could ascribe any name he or she believes can be associated with the sentiments. For me, its Sekera. Yes, more so than Amaradeva, no disrespect intended. 

 

The length, breadth and depth of who he was and who he still needs to be measured not only in terms of his voluminous works across genres but the creativity deployed to obtain the most salient of human verities. Human and not simply Sri Lankan, let me emphasise. Perhaps an incident which occurred some years ago may serve as elaboration.

 

It happened at a book launch at the Library Services Board Auditorium. In fact several books were launched that day, a set of excellent translations of Pablo Neruda by Indrani Ratnasekera who, unlike many who translate Neruda into Sinhala (from English), had actually studied Spanish and Spanish literature for years and therefore was probably more insured against mis-translation and of course misrepresentation. It happened when the inimitable W A Abeysinghe addressed the gathering.

 

Ever the student of global literatures given to serious reflection on the way social, economic, political, cultural and philosophical factors leave their traces on words and lines, Abeysinghe offered Neruda in a nutshell. It was like a poem. And it included a poem. A Sinhala translation of an English translation which, I am sure, Indrani Ratnasekera could have probably improved much, no offence to Abeysinghe.

 

I may have zoned out for a moment and if Abeysinghe had given a preamble, I must have missed it. I listened to the recitation and somehow felt that I had heard/read it before. I will get to it shortly. 

 

Abeysinghe, towards the end of his speech, made the following observation: අපි මොනතරම් කුඩා ද! Yes, that argument could be made if one were to compare and contrast the work of any nation or community or culture or language against the full corpus of world literature, but Abeysinghe was drawing from the dimensions of Neruda’s literary universe. And he may have been right. 

 

Thankfully, I had to speak after this elder or even the eldest statesman of Sinhala literature, unsung and unhonoured for no fault of his. Thankfully, because he had provided me an entry point. He may have mentioned this, I do not remember, but anyway, by the time I got to speak I knew that the poem he had translated was one of Neruda’s featured at the end of the movie Il Postino (The Postman) based on the 1985 novel by Antonio Skármeta titled Ardiente paciencia (Burning Patience). This was why it was familiar. 

 

And it was at that age...

Poetry arrived in search of me. 

I don΄t know, I don΄t know where it came from,

from winter or a river.

I don΄t know how or when,

no, they were not voices, 

they were not words, nor silence,

but from a street I was summoned, 

from the branches of night,

abruptly from the others,

among violent fires or returning alone, 

there I was without a face

and it touched me.

I did not know what to say,

my mouth had no way with names

my eyes were blind, 

and something started in my soul,

fever or forgotten wings, 

and I made my own way, 

deciphering that fire 

and I wrote the first faint line, 

faint, without substance, pure nonsense,

pure wisdom of someone who knows nothing, 

and suddenly I saw the heavens unfastened

and open planets, palpitating plantations, 

shadow perforated, riddled with arrows,

fire and flowers, 

the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,

drunk with the great starry void,

likeness, image of mystery,

I felt myself a pure part of the abyss. 

I wheeled with the stars; 

my heart broke loose on the open sky.

 

Here’s his translation:

ඒ දවස්වල තමයි

කාව්‍යය

මා සොයාගෙන ආවෙ

සීත සමයේ සිටද

ගඟක ඉඳලාවත්ද

කෙසේ නම්, කවදාද

මා දන්නේ නැත්තේය

නැත,

කටහඬක් නම් නොවේ

වදන්ද නොවේමය

නිශ්චලත්වයද නොව

වීදියේ සිටිය මට ආයේය කැඳවුමක්

රැයේ අතුපතරතින්

ආපහු එමින් සිටියෙ මි බිහිසුණු ගිනිදැල් මැදින්

මා සතු නොවිය මුහුණක්

එය පැමිණ

ස්පර්ශ කළේය මා.

කියන්නේ කුමක්දැයි

සිතා ගත නොහැක්කේය

මගේ මුවට

නාවේය කිසි නමක්

මගේ දෑස

තාමත් අන්ධය

ආත්මය තුල

කැළඹුණිය කිසිවක්

උණ ගැනිලාවත්ද?

මම ගියෙමි ආ මඟහිම

කියවන්ට තතනමින්

ඒ ගින්න අතරින්ම

එවිට මම ලියුවෙමි

මගේ මුල්ම කවි පදය

බොහොම දුර්වල

හරයක්තද ඇත්තේ නැති

නියම මනස්ගාතය.

කිසිවක්ම නොමදන්න කෙනෙකුගේ

පවිත්‍ර ප්‍රඥාව

දුටුවෙමිය මම එසඳ

දෙව් ලෝ තල අගුල් ගැලවෙනු

ග්‍රහලෝක විවර වනු

හෙවණැලිද විදගෙන

වගාවන් සසල වනු

ඊතලද ගින්දරද මල්ද

පහන් වන රාත්‍රියේ, මුළු මහත් විශ්වයද.

තුන් තේරවිල්ලක්ය

අල්ප වූද, ක්ෂුද්‍ර වූද

ජීවියෙක් වූ මම

තරු පිරිවැරූ මහා අනන්තයෙන්

මෝහනය වී

විශ්වයේ අනන්ත ගුප්තභාවය

හා සමාව සිටින්නෙමි සිතුනේය මට එසඳ

මාද මේ අගාධයෙහි

කොටසක් බව භ්‍රමණය වීමි මමද

තරු සමග

නිදහස් වුණු මගේ කඳ

පියාඹන්නට විය මන්ද මාරුතය හා. 

 

And I shared with the audience the first thought that had come to mind listening to Abeysinghe’s recitation, a thought not precipitated by knowledge of the original or the context, for that had come later: ‘One of Sekera’s poems.’ And I said, ‘අපි මොනතරම් විශාලද…නේද අබේසිංහ මහත්තයෝ (we are not small, are we Mr Abeysinghe?)’ 

 

He smiled, this good humoured man, an nodded his head in agreement, for one does not preclude the other. We are small and also great. Such verities did Sekera reveal to us, such greatness did he bestow on all of us.

 

Mahagama Sekera was not adjunct to Pundit Amaradeva or anyone else. He was not one part of some duality. He was and is the gee potha and the meevitha — the book of verse and the [glass of] wine, both. He would probably brush it off, for he, according to all accounts, was humble. Small. And that is also an aspect of greatness.

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Rajitha Dissanayake and houses that are marked for burning

Review of Rajitha Dissanayake's 'Ape Gedara Gini Thiyaida (Will they burn our house down)'

 

 

Rajitha Dissanayake’s plays are very much like himself. A most unassuming playwright, Rajitha has ‘everyday’ written all over, almost to the point of not being noticed. 

Theatregoers, whether or not they have ‘everyday lives’ (who does not, anyway), are a select crowd. They go for entertainment and what they come off with depends on what they bring. Rajitha doesn’t disappoint.

There’s enough humour to prompt some laughs, relationship dilemma that makes one wonder if the playwright is a voyeuristic and secret miner of people’s private lives, enough ‘drama’ to keep the audience riveted, plot twists that pique curiosity, and social and political commentary for those who find such things interesting.

His latest, ‘Ape Gedara Gini Thiyaida (Will they burn our house down?),’ is no different.  Humour, romantic intrigue and political satire are delivered with deft brushstrokes of suspense and extremely clever criss-cross of dialogue. He makes the character indulge in soliloquy masqueraded as conversation even as he grapples with the contemporary political firmament and perennial philosophical questions such as truth, dimensions of loyalty, and the meanings of justice, crime and punishment.  

Rajitha, true to form, is minimalistic in set, word and movement. It’s all elegant nevertheless and speaks of accomplished craftsmanship. He does add to ‘stage life’ so to speak with music and song, none of which is intrusive but in fact integral to the plot. 

 

Four friends, classmates from an all girls’ school who were once in the same choir, meet after a long time. So there’s reminiscing that is worked into conversations that seem titled ‘Tell me about your life.’ Two are married, one divorced and one single. Their life trajectories have taken them to different shores in terms of profession and relationships, as is not uncommon. Deep down or, in fact, not too far from the surface of things, there are commonalities. There’s conviction and doubt, comfort zones and unease, and the inevitable interplay of emotion and reason, especially when the party is wrecked by an incident seemingly external and yet somehow containing enough of the ‘internal’ to bring to a halt the festivities.

Niroshi (played by Ama Wijesekara), Tharushi (Yasodha Rasanduni), Sujeewa (Jayani Senanayake) and Nayani (Bimsara Premaratne) all give good accounts of their acting capabilities. They no doubt found a convenient prop in well-crafted dialogue, but then again words alone are never enough to yield consistency in character portrayal. They were as good ‘in silence.’ 

They have men in their lives or wish there were. Men they have relationships with and men they can’t get out of their minds. And the men (there are four in all, three we see and the absent fourth the principal character, strangely and yet believably) gave excellent performances too. Vijith (played by Pradeep Aragama), Sunimal (Prasad Sooriyarachchi) and Heshan (Tharusha Kumarasinghe) are as authentic in the portrayal of, let’s say, ‘everyday people we know in our lives.’  

That’s also part of Rajitha’s genius. The characters, dialogue, plot-unfolding, never seems contrived. The magic is in the way he strings it all together to say something less said and make us think again of things we may have believed we had thought out, concluded and laid to rest.

Certain things of course are never really buried for good. The perennials referred to above, for example. They surface again and again in our lives or find residence in other lives, generation to generation. It’s the details and frills that change. Especially in politics, as the play tells us.  

‘Will our house be burnt down?’ Now that’s a question that directly takes us to the days of the ‘Aragalaya’ (the quotation marks are not for language but the claim — given the play of ‘orchestration’ in what was largely marked by spontaneity and of course the outcomes compared to desired result).

 

But what is this ‘house’? Is it an architectural form within which some human beings live or is it the structure of an individual's mind or is it a larger entity, a composite of individuals, families, relationships or even a social order or polity? Is that polity on fire? Is it made of arsonists (of a kind), considering social-media sparks that ignite much more than the curiosity and imagination of the consumer? Is Rajitha making his players ponder over the possibility of arson or is he making us ask the same question from ourselves or is he offering what could transpire in the future, distant or even not so far away? Who does the burning? A stranger, an acquaintance, a loved one or are we ourselves the arsonists?

There are the par-for-the-course tidbits of political satire. He seems to have deliberately set the play at a time before the last two major elections, throwing in claims and hopes of candidates, parties and voters which, naturally, force the audience to compare-and-contrast all of that with what we have. The laughs thus generated say something of the sentiments of the general polity.

Again, what struck me most was the less said and not-said-at-all. That’s the space in the theatrical canvas Rajitha has offered us to paint as we wish. Rajitha Dissanayake is never in-your-face. Neither is his work. And yet, he has this damning ability to crawl surreptitiously into heart and mind. He awakens those in slumber and those awake he does not allow to sleep again.    

 

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'You are right, I may be wrong!’

‘I may be wrong’ is a rule of thumb that’s probably among the least used rules of thumb. Indeed it is probably not even considered to be a rule of thumb.  

It makes sense for people to base their decisions on what they know. After all, they can’t decide based on the unknown. That’s if they are pushed to a decision. If not, it makes sense to postpone or suspend a decision, especially if there’s a sense that there could be factors that ought to be taken into account.

We can take a long time to reach ‘conviction’ but we can also go with ‘gut.’ We do both, given contexts, and no one can be faulted. The problem arises or rather can have enhanced and even dangerous consequences when decisions have the potential to impact many. One may trip over one’s delusions, one might trip a couple of others in the process, but one can cause monumental devastation and dispossession too. It’s about power.

It is incumbent on the powerful, positioned as they are to impact many rather than a few, to exercise utmost caution when making decisions. Such individuals, if they are too arrogant to think ‘I may be wrong,’ are err regardless can unleash untold misery.

It comes down to conviction, even convictions of ‘the greater good.’  

So consider a leader who truly believes that he has no personal agenda and is absolutely unconcerned about the political future of the party he belongs to. Suppose he believes that his every act is prompted by absolute conviction that the outcome would benefit the entire population or in the very least the vast majority.  In his mind he is a man of the people, a true representative of people’s interest, mandated to represent and to decree for the betterment of the people etc.

If there be such an individual and he believes that he is 100% in concert with ‘people’s interest’ there can be few who could be as dangerous. Of course it can be worse. Donald Trump, for example, has said that his morality is above all laws, domestic or international. He believes that ‘[his] morality, [his] mind is the only thing that can stop [him].’

But even if it’s something less grand, if the idea of being driven by people’s interest has taken hold to the point that it is the core belief, any opposition from any quarter or any kind would be immediately seen as ‘anti-people.’ Simultaneously such a leader, again in the name of the people and people’s interests, would have no qualms about quelling such dissent.

In such a scenario ‘other people’ cease to count. ‘Other people’ as in the objectors, that is. That’s where fascism begins. It comes without announcing itself, it comes without an introduction or name card. It has already taken root.

Fascist roots grow into enormous trees very fast. Its fertiliser is a simple formula: ‘I am right, therefore you must be wrong; I am for the people, therefore you must be against the people; I stand for progress, therefore you must stand for stagnation or worse.’

Those who think this way will not suffer criticism. Worse, they will not be self-critical. They see no reason to question themselves because they are convinced that they are right. And when things go sour, it’s someone else who is to blame. It could start, for example, with political opponents. Then the blame is shifted to officials. Eventually, the people.

Sometimes it is not really the arrogance (not courage) of convictions. It is fear. The powerful fear nothing more than to be seen as weak. Acknowledgment of error, in their book, amounts to a flaw. When flawlessness is assumed, even a single hairline fracture is seen as a chasm of gigantic proportions. When one sees one’s flaws in such dimensions it is inevitable to believe that others see them in similar proportions. That should not be allowed to happen. That’s the thinking, typically.

There’s just yes and no. Nothing between. Black or white, no other colours, no shades even. If honour claims are called to question, the fear is that one has been found guilty of being dishonourable. Nothing less than impeccable would do.  But then one doesn’t have to be impeccable. All that matters is to convince oneself that one is impeccable. So even error is not seen as such.

It’s for all these reasons that over the centuries people have come to understand that humility more than anything else is the true signature of greatness. No braggadocio. No false claims. No strutting. Do what needs to be done without fanfare. Take praise in one’s stride and take seriously any criticism that may come one’s way.  

Maybe we ought to practice saying the following: ‘Yes, you are right; I may be wrong.’ Makes it easy to actually say it when the occasion arises. 

 [This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday']

 

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. malindadocs@gmail.com

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Cpl H.R. Ratnayake saw way ahead than most of us

He is known.  To family, friends and comrades-at-arms. And fellow inmates at Ranaviru Sevana.  Corporal H.R. Ratnayake hails from Dambemeda, a village located between Ratnapura and Embilipitiya.  He joined the Army on the 17^th of May, 1995.  He put his life on line for country and fellow citizen. 

I don’t know his battle-field story.I don’t know what he left behind when he joined the Army.  I don’t know what he acquired in addition to salary.  I don’t know of the rigors of training.  I know nothing of the thoughts that crossed his mind, his hopes or his fears, the bruises and the bleeding, the trials that make up battle-field experience, the heroics and his grief of losing friend and comrade.  

 

All I know is that his entire world went black three years later.  He was rendered totally blind by a blast on the Pranthan-Mullaitivu Road at approximately 1.00 am on the 29^th of November, 1998.  I know that a few days ago, Cpl Ratnayake won the National Chess Championship for the Visually Handicapped. 

He was introduced to the game by the ‘Anda Jana Seva Mandalaya’, the authority dedicated to serving the visually handicapped, through the good offices of the Ranaviru Sevana.  This was in the year 2000.  His teacher was Mr. Sumanapala, who was a civilian blind from birth. 

Now there are those who play blindfold chess.  They are not visually challenged in any way.  They’ve played long enough, studied thousands upon thousands of position and are therefore able to visualize the 64 squares and the potential for magic therein without any difficulty.  It is different when your first encounter with the game is through touch.  In fact, thinking about it, I feel it is impossible for someone who ‘sees’ to understand how easy or difficult it is for someone who does not. 

Cpl Ratnayake picked up the game.  It captured his imagination.  He spent hours playing and learning.  He became reasonably good at chess.  He even went to India in 2003 to participate in a 16-nation tournament, winning 4 out of the 7 games he played. 

I didn’t know of Cpl Ratnayake until a few months ago.  I didn’t know that there were many blind servicemen who played chess.  Not until a close friend of mine took me to Ranaviru Sevana to show me the amazing lives led by those who have given so much and incapacitated themselves just so we can all live limbed, seeing, hearing, fear-free lives.  It was humbling and empowering to learn about how they overcame injury, trauma and the shattering of life-dreams.  Each serviceman at the facility has an epic story.  Each story would evoke admiration, each inspire the nation to be more determined in efforts to validate, again and again, the sacrifices made by the particular individual and of course those of the thousands who have gone forever from this land and from collective memory. 

A few days before the tournament, Cpl. Ratnayake called me to clarify something.  A few days later, my friend called me.  She was excited and said that two young men from the Ranaviru Sevana, Ratnayake and Upul Indrajit had made it to the Semi-Finals.  She wanted me to talk to them.  I didn’t have much to say except a simple elaboration of ‘All the best’.  That evening, Cpl Ratnayake called me to share with me the joy of having won the event.  Indrajit finished 4^th, courtesy a mis-application of rules pertaining to time controls.  Major Dushyantha Yapa, a live wire at the Ranaviru Sevana who had helped whip up enthusiasm for the game, had lost at an earlier stage of the tournament. I am sure they shared Ratnayake’s joy. 

Cpl Ratnayake, by the way, is a three-time National Draughts Champion (among the visually handicapped).  Speaking strictly for me, I just cannot imagine the effort and commitment that this young man must have expended to learn these games, practice, develop techniques and play well enough to emerge as champion.  I can only assume that it is this same commitment that helped this nation prevail over the world’s most ruthless terrorist outfit and that this is exactly what will help stop those who harbour insidious designs on our resources, labour, cultural preferences etc. 

The nation knows the leaders, appreciates the sacrifice, sweat and blood shed and so on.  The political leadership too.  It is easy to celebrate the collective and necessary too.   We are, nevertheless, indebted to each and every man and woman who laboured one way or another to bring us the peace and create the fear-free environment we enjoy today.  Cpl Ratnayake is one among many, yes, but let’s raise a cheer to this remarkable young man, who exemplifies those qualities that saw us through our darkest days and will save us in the future too, as they saved our ancestors and a civilization from all kinds of marauders in all kinds of disguises. 

You’ve made your wife Surangani and your 6 year old child proud of you.  All the rest of us are too. And so, Cpl Ratnayake, Sir, take a bow.  And may the 64 squares conjure more magic than meets the naked eye of us lesser mortals.   

[First published in the Daily News, September 2, 2011, under the title 'Cpt H R Ratnayake won the war for us]

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Sama Dharmaratne’s loves

 

I knew Sama Dharmaratne, who was also known as Sama De Silva, first as the mother of a trio of young Nalandian chess players. She was also the teacher-in-charge of chess in that school. The eldest was Shehenaz, who was my age, the second was Sidath and the youngest was Dinoo, who would have been around eight years of age.

This was in 1978, at Ananda College, where the Inter-School Championship was being held. I believe it was later that I found out that they had an older brother, Samath, who attended Royal and became a member of the senior chess team.

There were the usual rivalries but all of that was just over the 64 squares. Friendships were formed and they erased school-related distinctions. There were tournaments held at Nalanda and since the Dharmaratnes lived close by, that’s where we went after the rounds were done.

She was kind. She was always with a smile. I remember Dinoo clinging to her whenever things went wrong. I remember his younger sister Sanjeewa hanging around until the brothers were done. They were a handful, but their mother managed somehow.

Years passed. I played on the same team as Samath, who was a few years older. He went on to become a doctor, as did his sister. I really don’t know what Shehenaz did or does. Sidath, who passed away around 16 years ago, was the one closest to me. We served together in the Chess Federation almost twenty years ago. Dinoo became a lawyer.

We never kept in touch, but whenever we met, randomly and infrequently, it was like old time — friends, brothers, reminiscing and affection untarnished by distance or years.

Last morning Dinoo called me. He said he wanted to meet because he wanted to see all his friends before he died! He was always mischievous and irreverent. So we agreed to meet at 6 o’clock in Kottawa. I was late. We talked for several hours. And he told me about his mother, the sweet, kind lady who I last met at Sidath’s funeral and who passed away a few years ago. Dinoo told me her story or rather the story of his mother, chess and Nalanda College.

The boys had been into outdoor sports such as cricket and hockey. There had been a chess board at home but no one played. No one knew how to play.

One day, their mother had gone to the British Council and borrowed a book titled ‘Simple Chess.’ She had taught herself the game so she could teach her children. This was when she realised that although there was a board at home, there were no pieces.

‘She cut a sheet of paper into squares and wrote letters on them to indicate what the piece was. Q for Queen, B for Bishop etc. Upper case for the white ‘pieces’ and lower case for the black.’

That’s how it all began. Sidath won the National Junior title, i.e. for players under 12 years of age. Dinoo won it three years in a row. Shehenaz was solid but his younger siblings were the stars. Sidath even made it to the Nationals. Samath never played junior chess.

‘He would have been around 14 when Amma taught us chess. She could be strict. She would say “sit” and that’s what we did!’

Samath was one of the few who made it to Royal’s senior team without ever playing in the junior team.  

‘Nangi wasn’t interested, although she played for Colombo Campus and represented Medical College the year I captained the Law College team. So we were on opposite sides of the Law-Medical encounter,’ Dinoo said.

We talked late into the night. I dropped Dinoo at his place in Maharagama and came home. I couldn’t stop thinking of his mother.

Apparently, she was one of three or four girls who had attended Mahinda College, Galle. Arisen Ahubudu had taught her. She later moved to Visakha Vidyalaya. Her husband, Dharmaratne De Silva was a principal who served in Kotmale, among other places, and eventually retired as Commissioner of Education.

She may have told her children why she wanted them to play chess. I should check with Dinoo or Samath. What matters is how she went about it. Learning a game from scratch, indeed teaching herself the basics, the A-B-C of the moves, so to speak, could not have been easy, especially with five children to take care of. It must take a special kind of determination not to be deterred by the fact that there were no pieces. And then, to start chess at in one of the leading schools in the island!

Nalanda has produced many strong players over the years. Susal De Silva, won the national title at the age of 16 and went on to retain the title the next two year as well. Susal is the youngest Sri Lankan to secure the International Master title. Then there’s young Chenitha Karunaratne, just 10 years old and already one of the strongest players in the country.

It’s many years since she passed away and even longer since she retired; I wonder if present day Nalandians know what Sama Dharmaratne did for their school and in particular chess at Nalanda. Those of us who played chess as schoolboys in the 70s and 80s got to know her boys. We played with and against them. We became friends. We knew their mother was the teacher-in-charge of chess.  

We didn’t know her, really. A kind, sweet, lovely lady who treated us as though we were her own sons, yes, but not as the formidable force that turned Nalanda into a chess heavyweight, so to speak. Nalanda’s success made other schools stronger. That’s how it works. We all owe her much.

How little we know about teachers, I find myself thinking. My thoughts go back to that tender time at her house, at tournaments and finally at my friend Sidath’s funeral. She smiled when she saw me and softly spoke my name. ‘Aney Sidath,’ she said even more softly.

She’s a poem that cannot be transcribed and therefore I must end this with the following (favourite) verse from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
     Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.

We’ve lived well, I must tell Dinoo. Fortunate were we. Privileged to have been sons to Sama Dharmaratne.   

 [This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday']

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Sanjaya Epa Senevirathna’s word-ink brush strokes

The unit of time was transformed from hours to litres. The long hand is now at the edge of an Asoka glass. The first pouring began when the short hand was at the three hundred and seventy five millilitre level. Thereafter having ventured into the regions of solitude, the cleared pathway led to the bottom of the glass where all hands collapse.

Along the way, thoughts that arrive from the void meet words subjected to self-inflicted incarceration . Once they meet the journey is no longer one of solitude.    

The past converses quietly with words associated with to generate compatibilities and leave short notes of it all the following morning. The new day arrives through the previous day’s notebook. The note lengthens as new words join those scribbled before. Since I am partial to associating words that graze entirety and context or leave them altogether I have kept them thus. Those that left did not just up and go. Some of them cut, chopped and in other ways hurt with pens of various colours while others received torrents of foul language. Those that are not found herein would forgive, I believe.

The above is the preface to the debut collection of poems by Sanjaya Epa Senevirathna titled ‘Aadara Saadaya,’ (literally ‘The feast of love,’ but dubbed ‘Coffeed Poetry’ by the poet). It doubles as an acknowledgments note. I usually get to the frills, if you will, such as forewords, addendums and acknowledgments only after I’ve got through the main literary course. If at all. In this case, I did, again after reading the poems. The poetry and the poet compelled me to venture to the periphery. That too was poetic. Unexpected and delightful. In fact I can’t think of any such ‘peripheral’ note that complements a collection of poems so beautifully. The first thought that came to mind was, ‘Sanjaya should write prose too.’

Sanjaya may not. He confesses that he had promised himself that he wouldn’t write anything until he turned 40. He didn’t publish, but he did write, but sporadically. He penned a few songs for well-known artists such as Kasun Kalhara, Kithsiri Jayasekera, Chandana Liyanaarachchi and Nirosha Virajini. He produced advertising copy too, but a long time ago. Poetry had come  ‘writing’ had been slow. Maybe what happened was that he translated poetry into another art form, like hours to litres.

Sanjaya Epa Senevirathna is best known as an award-winning designer of book covers. What had become a flirtation in his school days seems to have blossomed into a lifelong love affair. So far he has designed around 300 book covers. The cover for Kasun Pussawela’s telling account of the Welikada riots, ’10, 11, 12,’ won the State Literary Award for the Best Book Cover in 2017. Incidentally, that’s the only award on offer for book covers Sri Lanka. Sadly.

Having read the preface/acknowledgments I asked him, ‘why not a novel or short stories?’ Sanjaya said it could be on account of his work as a copywriter and art director: ‘I must have been framed by advertising briefs — I couldn’t get out of the A4 sheet of paper.’ Maybe one day he will.

So, that’s the poet. What of the poetry?

Upul Shantha Sannasgala in his foreword, written as a poem, likens him to an Indian Gooseberry or nelli. ‘A nelli-flavoured poet,’ is how he describes Sanjaya. The Indian Gooseberry has five identifiable flavours. Sannasgala believes that the poet has evolved into a many-flavoured man of words.

The poems, untitled, speak of and to perennial themes such as love, relationships, things that come together and are torn asunder. They are rich in metaphor and elegant in economy. Maybe this is because he has, as a cover-designer, has much practice in condensing much into few.

Having awoken
in a new territory
language we abandoned
in favour of essence.

The above verse perhaps reveals the poetic mind and explains stylistic preferences. In fact, although inserted in metaphoric sense, he offers…

Let us remove
unnecessary words
and our glasses fill
in the space thus created.

The artist, who is necessarily concerned with line and space, pours familiar techniques into his poetry. He advocates and indeed creates breathing space for the reader, a moment and place for reflection, a pathway into thought and thought process wherein one can become happily trapped and lost but nevertheless find solace of one kind or another.

He concludes, ‘it is in the sound of patience / that (one) can hear love.’

Endowed with such a gift for finesse it is difficult to understand why Sanjaya, at times, feels a need to elaborate. The same poem has the following lines thrust somewhere in the middle:

The sounds of quarrelling
which filled silent spaces
moves through tension, sweat, and
among streaming tears
to moisten the territory…
so tender leaves can sprout.

Such expansion is sometimes necessary, but not in this instance. He says so much with so little and seems to have forgotten himself and his operative principle to brevity.

Consider this:

Direct the uncluttered gaze
beneath the surface…
at the water’s depths
there are words to be found
more polished and spherical than necessary.  

Such words can delight of course. They can detract too. When poetised, the blemishes can be retained but this does not mean they are unpolished. It is an invitation to write as well as read or rather how to write and write and how not to.

It’s the second verse, longer than the first and even more lengthier than the third and last which I believe captures and holds the idea on its own:

All people have stories
but letters are only found
upon riverbeds where dreams have dissolved…

Such ‘editing’ cries out in other poems as well. Consider the following obtained by removing an equal number of lines/words:

Could you be a womb
wherein I could curl
and be reborn
in the sounds
of a pulsating heart?

Such love
I still need
you know?

What can be said of fathers and sons, what of what’s said in slivers of time or volume, minutes or litres?  

Who else listened
to stories that fathers
don’t even tell mother(s)
but men?

Would have sounded better if ‘men’ or let’s say ‘males’ which is the correct translation of the original ‘pirimi’ was replaced by ‘sons,’ I felt. That said, to me it is the most beautiful poem in the collection. Well, the most beautiful verse, for it’s just the first few lines of a longer poem.

‘Men,’ does make sense because the rest of the poem speaks of the work of males, as lovers and friends. Could have been another poem, though.

The poet reveals himself and like an accomplished artist hides himself as well. There’s a Sanjaya Epa Senevirathna who arrives and one who has just left signs of presence, within reach but untouchable.

He writes of an addressee resisting capture in any form.

In all poetry read so far
you are not evident
no, not even in a single line

He continues and I paraphrase: ‘No, not in a text or subtext, not in a tone, a rhythm, not in a brushstroke, or piece of fiction; [you] are in your existence, but I am not.’

I did not distance you,
friend,
into a different circle
I entered
that’s all;
there’s no one else,
but me.

For a friend or a lover where friendship or love has run its course, a word of consolation? Perhaps. Perhaps it’s simply the truth, as in the common ‘it’s not you, it’s me.’  But it seems to me that Sanjaya is where he is as he has always been. In his circle. Alone. From there he gazes upon the world around him, the people who venture close or towards whom he moves along with his circle-residence, condensing treatise into lines, hues and spaces, removing unnecessary words, creating breathing space so readers can sip a cup of coffee and feast on love at their own pace.

The cup runneth over not, but a few drops remain. Just enough to flavour love, among other things.

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. malindadocs@gmail.com.

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