Translators and Translations

 

My first attempt at translation was in the last 1990s while I was taking a class titled ‘Marx, Nietzsche and Freud,’ taught by  Professor Geoff Waite of the German Studies Department at Cornell University. The course requirement for graduate students was simple: maintain a journal reflecting on the required reading, lectures and class-discussion. I can’t remember the particular journal entry now, but there was a passage in Simon Navagaththegama’s ‘Sansaaraaranyaye Dadayakkaaraya’ that seemed relevant and which I felt should go into my reflections for the week. 

Geoff didn’t read Sinhala. So I translated the relevant paragraphs.

Emboldened, I proceeded to translate the entire book, with much encouragement from Liyanage Amarakeerthi who was reading for his PhD at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, at the time. A fun exercise and that was it, or so I thought.

Not too long after, I joined ‘Sunday Island.’ Then, as now, that paper was heavy with serious political commentary. The features, in contrast, were weak. Zanita Careem, who was in charge of that section, lamented that we didn’t have enough people to write. She was correct. So I got used to picking interesting stories from our sister paper, ‘Divaina,’ and translating the same.

It was probably in early 2003 that I became serious about the exercise. Dr Ranga Wickramasinghe wanted me to translate ‘Yuganthaya’ (End of an Era) written by his late father Martin Wickramasinghe. I told him that I am not equipped to undertake such a task and that I didn’t have the time either. Instead, I proposed that I translate Martin Wickramasinghe’s ‘Upan Da Sita’ (literally, ‘From the day of [my] birth.’  It was a biography and therefore episodic; ideal for serialising in a Sunday paper.

It took more than a year, but it got done. A decent draft, I told myself then. I believe this even today as I pour over the manuscript to get it ready for printing on commission for the Martin Wickramasinghe Trust. It’s almost a re-write!

The downside of translating a few pages each week for a newspaper is that it happens while attending to regular newspaper work. Deadline-pressure can make one careless and even flippant. There were occasions when I understood neither word nor sentence. I had glossed over such things or left them out altogether. Then there was the issue of language. I can safely say that I knew less about the Sinhala language and Sinhala culture then that I do now. That ignorance corrupted the exercise.

Now, as I go from word to word, sentence by sentence, it’s a new text that unfolds. It’s a new Martin Wickramasinghe that speaks to me. I am delighted for new reasons. Amazed at times as well. I haven’t read him at all, I am compelled to conclude.

This is of course not an essay about Wickramasinghe’s life, world-view, literary endeavours etc. There are many gems on many subjects in this book which a discerning reader will no doubt pick, marvel at and learn from. For me, right now, there’s this:

‘The colloquial language of the village brings together both language and life. Descriptions that bring together the life of the villager and the village environment are often found in the work of folk poets who employ this language. The meaning of such descriptions cannot be captured by the mind alone.’

The colloquial is not always read correctly by the pundits, especially if they are less conversant with it. It can, theoretically, make for even worse aberration when translated.

Martin Wickramasinghe was referring to a set of people who took issue with certain descriptions. He wrote ‘If a certain feeling is inspired within someone who read that description which is a blend of village life and the landscape of the village, it is because the description has the power to excite not just his eyes and mind, but other sensory organs as well.’

He concluded: ‘I don't believe that a person who does not make the effort to “hear” the sound of a bat flapping its wings, the cacophony of insects, the occasional barking of a village mutt, or the mooing of a calf, would be able to imagine village life or village language.’

He explained, further:  ‘Only someone who has some notion of the relationship between the language and life of the village would think that the syllables that make up the words “aththatu gæseema (flapping of wings),” “biruma (bark),” and “umbææ (mooing)” simultaneously raise the sounds of bats, dogs and calves. In order to feel the meaning of sayings such as “the air in the garden contained a certain wetness along with the cool” and “The vehi andura had rendered the air heavier than on other days,” not only the mind, but the body also has to be employed. I think all these pundits found fault with this description because theirs was only a mental exercise.’ 

How do we translate, then? Can we translate?

We can try. We must, I feel. And so we interject explanation in the text itself or as footnote and end note. We compile glossaries. We struggle not only to be faithful to the source text but to do justice to the reader as well, ever conscious of the reader’s shadow falling on the keyboard and a voice murmuring, ‘make sure it flows, make sure I am not overly taxed to flip to your glossary or glance at footnote and end note, and make sure you don’t butcher the meaning in any other way either.’

Back to ‘Upan Da Sita.’ A few more chapters to work on or rather re-write. Riches await, and not only about the life and times of Martin Wickramasinghe. I am privileged.

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

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American civilisation and its discontents

A bit of civilization might do them good

I can’t help but think that anyone who wishes to end a civilisation has to be uncivilised and incapable of creating even the building blocks of civilisation. But then again, it is fascinating is it not that the makers of the English language or rather the inheritors of that language who elevated it to mother-tongue status are the most confused about the meaning of certain words?

Just the other day, a UK lawmaker castigated Iran for ‘being reckless.’ Reckless. Remember the word. The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary (OLD) defines the word as follows: ‘an adjective describing behaviour that shows a lack of care about danger and the possible, often harmful, results of your actions. It implies acting rashly without thinking about consequences.’ A revised version of that dictionary may one day add a synonym: trump. As in ‘Donald’.

Oh yes, bibi, bibi netanyahu, benjamin netanyahu, netanyahu and zionism could work too (the lower case is deliberate and in line with standard style for abstract nouns). They can be thus elevated because what they have done, do and will probably continue to do, ironically, is not at all abstract. Not abstruse, not hypothetical, not unreal. Real. Clear.

Need we elaborate? No!

What would constitute ‘the end of (a) civilisation’? First, what constitutes ‘civilisation’? Let’s ask the OLD. OLD says, ‘a state of human society that is very developed and organised.’ OLD also offers: ‘a society, its culture and its way of life during a particular period of time or in a particular part of the world.’

So, if anyone threatens to end a civilisation as per the OLD definitions, it’s a declaration of genocidal intent. Genocidal intent rehearsed (as in pilot-project, let’s say) from Day One of the attacks on Iran by trump and bibi (yes, lower case, for we need to rehearse these abstract-nouns-to-be, although this does not strictly conform to grammar rules; but then again let’s say ‘poetic license’ and leave it at that), we must point out.

America of the United States. Is it a ‘civilisation’? It’s certainly a human society. It is developed, as per the dominant paradigm of development, one could argue. Organised, yes, although it’s organised subjugation, mind-control, land-theft, resource-extraction etc., in the USA and elsewhere. It is a society, yes. Fractured, violent, racist, exploitative and such, but yes, a society nevertheless. Its culture is perhaps more in flux than most societies, but the transformations of culture and constant remixing could, in sum, deserve the term. It has many ways of life (and death as well; think KKK, BLM and the many genocidal wars launched over the last two centuries).

It does exist in a particular part of this world. It exists, moreover, in this moment in time. Two hundred years is not ‘old’ in civilisational terms. Two hundred years of expansion by way of land theft, invasion and purchase wouldn’t make ‘civilisation’ a pretty word, but let’s be generous. It’s a civilisation. Of sorts. Let’s say.

But trump? Is he civilised? A pathological liar accused of being a pedophile and who abused the powers of his office to trip relevant investigations, this man (and his partner in many crimes, bibi) twice attacked Iran in the middle of negotiations. He bombed or sanctioned (and hurrahed) the bombing of dozens of schools, hospitals and other civilian facilities, killing over 2000 people including children, the elderly and sick because he wanted to prevent Iran from retaliating to bombing. Would that be the talk of a civilised human being or a deranged egotist?

And he wants to end a civilisation. Didn’t happen and probably will not happen, but that intent to destroy is fascinating isn’t it? Envy is a powerful motive, but he is way too full of himself to envy anyone. In fact it’s the opposite that’s true. Contempt. His speeches are full of derogatory and racist epithets.

Enough. The man is uncivilised, even though the BBC, CNN, Fox, Al Jazeera and other media outfits don’t dare say it. Maybe they should check the OLD and check whether their media practices conform to the definition offered therein for ‘civilisation,’ ‘civilised,’ ‘civil,’ ‘civility’ etc. Also, genocide, ethics, principle and other such lovely words, while they are at it.

But enough. We know this POTUS (President of the United States) well enough.

But what of the people of the USA who make that dysfunctional society that has so much potential to build a great nation or at least one that deserves to stand with the civilised world? What of them? What has all this done to their signature and its civilisational potential?

The aforementioned media outfits don’t (dare?) report on what the people of the USA have to say. Nothing of the massive and indignant protests against the bloody adventurism of their president. But those people are alive. If America of the United States is a country that aspires to civilisation, then the seeds necessary for the full flowering of all things that make that word meaningful are alive in their hearts.

They know what ‘reckless’ means. They know what ‘genocide’ means. They know what ‘civilisation’ means. They know that their country has to walk quite a distance, perhaps decades but maybe even a few centuries (or a few months), to get there.

They have one thing going for them. Trump. Think about it. He’s shedding all the frills that have hidden the proverbial ‘Ugly American.’ Disgusting. So disgusting that the beautiful people of the USA will have to do something about it.

Civilisation. A great idea for the United States of America. And Zionist Israel Let’s hope they get there one day.

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

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No spectators at chasm’s door

Carl August Sandburg, the American (of the United States) poet, biographer, journalist and winner of three Pulitzer Prizes (two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln) wrote a book-length poem celebrating resilience, wit and the democratic spirit of ordinary fellow-citizens during the Great Depression. The book, titled ‘The people, yes,’ has the following line: ‘suppose they gave a war and nobody came.’ It would become a famous anti-war slogan during the protests against one of the many wars that ought to have been called ‘American (of the United States) War’ or simply ‘US War’: on Vietnam.

Wars are seldom deserving of that interesting and disingenuous uttering of Lincoln in his much talked of Gettysburg Address, ‘of the people, by the people, for the people.’ Wars are of course fought ‘by people,’ but rarely out of conviction. They are not ‘for the people.' Wars are about profit. About land theft. Control or seizure of resources (like oil). Securing markets.

It would be lovely if war was declared but no one came. I can’t think of an example of that happening. People do, at times, abandon wars, but typically only when warmongering leaders (kings, tzars and presidents) lose their grip on power. Happened in Russia. Could happen in the USA.

We are not there yet. I am talking about the raging US-Israel War on Iran, which is simultaneously a war on civilisation, international law and humanity. There are many ways to cut that bloody cake, but let’s offer a nutshell: ‘Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, both deranged and both representing countries whose history is all about land-theft, enslavement, genocide and war-waging, attacked Iran to a) destroy nuclear capabilities that they (Trump and Netanyahu) claimed they had eliminated less than a year ago, b) prevent Iran from bombing Isreal when Israel bombs Iran (!), and c) engineer regime change.’

Well, we might add, ‘to bring democracy to Iran’ and ‘emancipate Iranian women.’ Now laugh.

Now let’s be sober.  The two genocidal egomaniacs gave the entire world their middle fingers and brought us all to the edge of a precipice. A chasm. We can choose, here in Sri Lanka, to think ‘it’s all happening far away,’ except that we are not exactly an island in the global economic order. If that were not the case, we wouldn’t be worrying about oil reserves. There wouldn’t be rationing.

There is a chasm, whether we acknowledge it or not. And this is why I remembered Mahmoud Darwish’s poem, translated by Fady Joudah, from the volume, ‘The Butterfly’s Burden.’ It’s titled ‘I have a seat in an abandoned theatre.’ It’s structured as a conversation between two people in ‘an abandoned theatre in Beirut.’ Yes, Beirut. You can flip the metaphors any which way you like. And let's not forget that 'Beirut' is all over the Persian Gulf.

Darwish writes:
I have a seat in the abandoned theater
in Beirut. I might forget, and I might recall
the final act without longing ... not because of anything
other than that the play was not written
skillfully ...

The scripts played out in theatres of war are hardly ever written skillfully. In this instance, the script writers, Trump and Netanyahu, are incorrigible and illiterate. Well, they can read and write, so technically they are literate, but then again their grammar is awful and they simply cannot structure coherent sentences.

Anyway.

Darwish ends with the following exchange:

He says: No spectators at chasm’s door ... and no
one is neutral here. And you must choose
your part in the end
So I say: I’m missing the beginning, what’s the beginning?

The beginning is a library full of books on empires, empire building, enslavement, exploitation, slavery, profit, greed, deceit etc., etc. Worth a visit. But here, at the chasm, with two trigger-happy thugs with massive egos and unburdened of shame, there’s no place to hide, nowhere to run.

Darwish writes (in ‘The horse fell of the poem,’ again translated by Joudah):

There is no margin in modern language left
to celebrate what we love,
because all that will be ... was
 
Wait. Was?  Perhaps. Then again, there are no laws against re-writing, in re-creating a language where love can be celebrated and where that which was made to be ‘was’ can be recreated. There are no spectators at 'chasm’s door.' At 'chasms’s door,' we stand. We are both player and spectator. We know the lines and don’t need a prompt. We are playwright and producer. We handle lights and props.

This is a genre of theatre where we can speak out of turn, deconstruct narratives and with wit and wisdom make more robust our hearts and resolve. We can choose to breathe or submit to enforced asphyxiation. We can be silent and count the dead until we walk into or are buried in rubble as a statistic.

The privilege of being a spectator at chasm’s door has been withdrawn. Simply put, it’s ours to make sure that the poem doesn’t fall off the horse.

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

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Let us live with veracity and love

There’s news from the war. News and fake news. News so recurrent that the word seems distinctly odd. News which, like the bread of Egypt (as Octavio Paz once said) is poetry over which the night has passed, rendering it unpalatable.

In the passing news, I read a name. Shiraz. It was a recognisable name from dozens tossed around by news agencies, sprinkled all over ‘stories’ so easily that one might forget that places are made of people.

There would have been people in Shiraz when the Israeli military executed airstrikes across the city. There must be people there even now, as I write. Even continuous strikes with bombs and missiles cannot really erase the people-signature of a city with a population close to 2 million. Shiraz is the capital of the Fars Province of Iran. Would take a lot more bombs. Or a nuke. Shiraz, like Iran, has survived the onslaught of tyrants and blood-thirsty, booty-seeking, megalomaniacs over centuries and millennia. One day both place and name will be gone or forgotten. For now, they exist.

I don’t know anyone living in Shiraz. I just know the name of a single person and he’s dead now. Khājeh Shams-od-Dīn Moḥamma or Khwaja Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafez-e Shirazi lived and wrote in the 14th Century. Hafiz (or Hafez) was his pen name and is derived apparently from the Arabic to mean guardian or keeper of the holy text. So he was Hafiz of Shiraz. He had a nickname too. Lesān-al-ḡayb. The tongue of the unseen. He was, in addition, referred to as Tarjomān al-asrār, or ‘interpreter of mysteries.’ A sufi he was and perhaps spoke the word of the ‘one god’ that people believe in but call by different names, as he himself observed: 

I don’t know if the people who gave the order and those who executed it had ever heard of Hafiz or indeed Shiraz. Indeed, they may take their ignorance to their respective graves. The people of Iran, irrespective of ideological preference, political loyalty and probably belief systems, would know. As their ancestors did and perhaps as generations yet unborn will. It is said that his works or at least excerpts from his verses are found in Iranian homes. Iranians apparently learn his poems by heart and use them as everyday proverbs.  I’ve been to Iran only once, about 15-18 years ago, but I do remember a Hafiz-poem adorning the wall behind the reception of the hotel I stayed in. I can’t remember the verse.

The Shiraz of the combined genocidal insanities of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu returned me to Hafiz, the poet who more than any other writer influenced Persians from his time to now. And I remembered a line from one of his poems

“Listen: this world is the lunatic's sphere,
Don't always agree it's real,

Even with my feet upon it
And the postman knowing my door

My address is somewhere else.”

Are addresses known? Well, yes. After all, we live in a world of pinpoint strikes that can target and take out the leaders of a country. A world where ‘target and take out’ is applied to schools, hospitals and households, which, logic says, could be ‘pinpointedly’ avoided but are not. The address(es) that Hafiz talks of are different. They don’t have street names. They are not located in cities that have names. It is not in a lunatic’s sphere. And this is why the maniacal Trumps and Netanyahus of our world utter unadulterated gibberish about war-statuses and objectives. They can’t find the ‘address’ of ‘the enemy.’

Hafiz says:

I once asked a bird,
how is that you fly
in this gravity of darkness?
She responded,
‘love lifts me.’
 
There is darkness, this is agreed upon. It is grave. Agreed upon. We would fly if we could. Wings are what we need. A good wind. Both love-made. But then, that’s just the uttering of someone in a poetic bubble, a ‘rationalist’ might say. Can we, with words, ‘intercept’ a butcher’s command, bend the arc of a missile, stamp upon it ‘return to sender’ and direct it towards the unmistakable address of a butcher of children, sick and elderly? No. But with a word or words appropriately conjoined we can manufacture breath, we can fuel the will to live.

When? Now!  Now, Hafiz says, is the time:

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child’s training wheels
To be laid aside
When you finally live
With veracity and love.

How else can we truly live, truly breathe and truly feel alive, if not with veracity and love, we must ask ourselves.  

And the war? It will continue to generate news and fake news. Odd news manufactured with odd words. Words rearranged to generate ideology-laden narratives that are twins of outcome preferences. Words, whichever way they are arranged, will fall apart and float into oblivioun when they are confronted by truth. And love.

There are many ways to live. And die. We might as well open household, community and country to those intangible, definition-resisting creatures. Veracity and love. They give wings. We need them, for we must fly now. Way above aircraft and missile. Just so we can walk this earth again, watering it with poetry and coaxing the soil to yield flowers and grain in deserts and craters.  

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The voice of Walt Whitman’s ghost

 

The pieces I’ve written over several months often refer to poetry and poets. Sometimes, tectonic shifts of the political and the earthquakes and skyquakes they engender rob us of words. Descriptions and analysis become meaningless when bombs rain down on schools, hospitals and households, when lies are uttered with each breath and are echoed by the pernicious, ignorant and innocent. At such times, we strip magnificent expositions of theory and practice, idea and ideology, history and historiography, conscience and articulation and other such things of flesh, sinew and blood. We are left with the bones of essence, charred or petrified. Poetry. Speaks. For what it is worth. And that’s my ‘column’ for this week, borrowed from a year ago or maybe even a century.  

America 
(awaiting the second coming)

America of Grandfather Whitman 
is no less green and no more red 
a thousand years later,
the tribes that watered his gardens
visible and invisible now as then 
wear badges of insult and humiliation
pride and prejudice, in the silence 
of courtrooms stifled, in the decadent dance  
of black and white to white-out guilt,
and the dignified citizens he spawned
count surreptitiously sporadic victories
chew on the chagrin of centuries buried deep.

 

America that was and would become pluralised 
as vivid, varied and numerous as immigrant and native
so defined and transformed in redefinition,
the relevant political economies 
of the before, the now, 
the becoming and futures imagined 
America, no more poor no less wealthy
than the colonial cousins deemed lesser in the South
and the bedfellows of genocide up north, less but not as low,
America and Americans of that time 
were not museumed as were those lands and children
that were and came before. 
America of the eternal verities:
America of joy and sorrow
America of profit and loss
America of praise and blame
celebratory and notorious America and Americans 
as collective overall, 
as segment through cleaving 
historic and accidental 
with and without blood-letting.

Misnamed but not misbegotten America,
led by manicured arrogance 
objected to in word —
many and not so many —
by poets who dissected past,
navigated the present-complex 
mapped her countenance 
traced scars and tears
wrought in tectonic fracture, 
marked the petrified glacial horror 
and the meltdowns that bled
into lake and river —
love’s slow obliteration of history,
unearthed griefs discarded 
and the most ancient of the simplest joys,
are writing, as I write, a blueprint 
for a carburetor that can reboot a corroded engine, 
a redemptive radiator and filters too
made of the finest gauze, membranes and papyrus 
whose resilience was branded in unnecessary wars. 

First there were none 
and then there were thirteen
between the Mississippi River and Appalachian Mountains
a constitution there was 
from the Iroquois Confederacy wrought
copyrights were not waived 
they were made not to count;
first there were thirteen states
and then the bowels of the Founding Fathers spilled out
their entrails snaked their way South and West
there was annexation by gun 
and by rights arrogated upon herself —
                the Guano Act of 1856,
the alibi of accumulated excrement was milked 
and seabirds and bats never knew or cared 
the fertilizer of insatiable greed was strewn far and wide, 
excremental increment was foundational  
then and later and even now, 
and not just in the United States of Amnesia:
that which was Britain, France and Spain,
that which was Mexico
that which was nothing of marauders therein 
that which was commonly held and not priced 
that which was priceless in the philosophies that reigned 
were mapped, named, marked and stamped —
the greatest land theft in remembered history.  

America of the United States 
overruled dignity and civilisation 
subdued righteous and righteousness 
and still its enormous stomach hungered,
and so gluttony spawned blood-letting
one hundred and thirteen and counting 
brown, black, yellow and white blood 
obliterated the red of the native,
Prepared America,
America of Guano-Seek
America of Seizure 
America the Self-Righteous
America of Mis-Naming,
America in democracy’s bastardization,
Jittery America -- manufacturer of enemies 
America the Pawn of Weapon and Pharmaceutical 
Urinating  America, territory-marker, 
a beast with one hundred and twenty eight heads 
friend of despot, monarch, junta and zealot 
Forgetful America inks rules in languages she does not know.

Grandfather Whitman floats over leaves of grass
sharp blades lacerate and his words, drenched
with blood of unknown signature, and
addresses poets and freedom fighters
the patriarchal, the fratricidal, the theatrical and obsolete:

'America was not mine, I did not create nor own, 
America was and is a fantasy, it’s dimensions
are now surreptitiously shifted 
and now in bold brush-stroked arrogance redrawn,
America was a noun, when I recorded
her continental cleavages, examined the syrups
of her veins, and traced her monumental coporeality,
America is noun, still, improper and egregious,
a gun, a drone, poisonous gas, climate-wrecker, 
warlike, war-liking and warrior, idiomatic aberration,  
thrusted down throats of the untrusting,
sugar-coated happy pill for the naive,
metaphor for desecrated temples, past-tenser of cities and peoples;   
I am not America, but America claims me, claims 
the bold with the timid, grotesque with the handsome, 
claims the apple and the pie, sticks fingers in exotic dips
draws out profit, purchases anonymity, apathy and horror —
I can no longer say ‘growing pains, be patient’;
I am too long dead to awake or awaken 
but I hear there are one hundred Freedom Trains on their way,
I hear they can swim, I hear they can fly, I hear
that they are sealing military installations and confiscating weapons  
and disarming the misinforming with transcendental smiles,
I hear they come to rewrite all my words, and to them
I say: “welcome citizens of the world, I am honored.”'

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

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Of books and men and learning to play the game

 

First we rejoice in the achievements of our parents, relatives of their generation and their friends. Later we celebrate the victories of our friends. Time passes and celebration gives way to commiseration. We lament the passing of people and the fading of glory days.

More time passes and we look to our children, their little victories, the little steps that become strides, the giving of their best — we applaud or slowly nod our heads with pride.

Time has passed. Just this morning I read a post. Not of a parent or someone of that vintage. Not of a friend or colleague. Not even a son.

‘Heartfelt congratulations to Sahan Agalawatta on being appointed as the Head Prefect of Royal College Colombo. This proud moment carries a deep emotional significance for the Royal College family. Sahan is the son of the late Sampath Agalawatta, the respected captain of the 1984 Royal rugby team who led the school to regain the historic Bradby Shield and brought great honour to the college. Though he is no longer with us, Sampath Agalawatta’s legacy of leadership, courage, and dedication continues to live on. Seeing his son rise to lead the students of Royal College is truly a touching and proud moment.’

The author is Riyaz Aluher, an old boy of the same school and a long time teacher who retired recently.

His words resonate. Sampath or ‘Agale’ as he was known was iconic. He was the name associated with the Class of 1983 of Royal College, Colombo. Sahan, Agale’s younger son, was a little boy when his father passed away. I have seen him off and on since. I mostly spoke about my friend but there was one occasion when I did tell him that he is Sahan and not ‘Agale’s son.’ In other words, he does not need any icon, father included, as a prop to greatness of any kind. That’s what I meant.

Sahan had his own battles to fight. I don’t know how he fought them, but he must have come through when it mattered. When I heard the news, I smiled. And there was a tear for Agale. As I write, there is a smile and a tear once again.  

I read the note and my thoughts went back to Riyaz or Riyaz Sir as he is better known and as I address him now, even though he was a few years junior to me in school. ‘Riyaz Sir’ because he was the Senior Games Master with whom I had to interact in my capacity as the Chairman of the Advisory and Management Committee in relation to chess, carrom and scrabble.  

Riyaz Sir could never stop smiling. The smiles would often be accompanied by a twinkle in his eye. He had a sense of humour. More importantly, he knew the school and he knew what it stood for. For him, education was all about producing decent, honourable and disciplined citizens. On such things he never compromised. So the students who encountered him, Sahan included I’m sure, learned important lessons from him that they may or may not have been taught formally in the classroom.  

I have not delved into his teaching history, i.e. those years before he joined his alma mater. It’s something I’ve jotted down in the must-do files of the mind. I’ve read him in the things he did for sports and kids involved in sports. I’ve read him in the bits and pieces revealed in the way he conducted himself as a teacher and Assistant Principal. And I’ve read him in the innumerable Facebook posts on various matters related to the school.

And so, I know that Riyaz Sir has learned of books and men (and women) as recommended in the College Song. And I know that he is a book (and a man) that hundreds of children who have since grown into men of standing have read and learned from.  Riyaz Sir has a rare appreciation of personality and history, for he researches and writes lovely tributes to Royalists, old and young, sometimes in the form of a birthday wish. The following is a witty, elegant and spot-on note on another member of our class, Sukumar Nagendran, whose philanthropy is legendary. As is his humility, I should add.  ‘A tribute to the letter “S”’ is the title he picked.  

‘The stately sweep of S shapes stories of strength, service, and sacrifice. It sings of spirit and steadfastness; it symbolizes sincerity and silent struggle. Sometimes sharp, sometimes soothing, this subtle symbol steers the soul of speech. Such splendid symbolism suits Sukumar — a seasoned son of Royal College Colombo — whose steadfast service strengthened both College and country. From school corridors to national circles, his signature was sincerity; his standard was selfless service. Solid in stance, simple in style, he stood for substance over show. Though now settled in the United States, the silver strand of school spirit still surrounds him. Seas may separate soil, yet sentiment stays steadfast. His support continues silently; his solidarity remains strong. Such souls sustain institutions; such spirits serve society beyond shores. So let the letter S salute Sukumar — symbol of service, scholarship, and sacrifice. May his story inspire succeeding generations to strive sincerely, serve selflessly, and stand steadfast for both College and nation.’

Books and men. Sampath, Suku and Riyaz Sir. They’ve learnt and they’ve served. They acknowledge teachers, they give back without hesitation. They all played the game, again as recommended in the College Song. With integrity, honesty and humility. 

As for young Sahan Agalawatta, who carries his father’s cheerful nature, humility and courage, all I can say is, ‘be you, and you’ll recolour the world in pleasing hues.’

Agale would have been proud. His mother and siblings are probably proud. He has made Riyaz Sir proud, he’s made all his father’s friends proud. Good things await.  

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

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Measured sweetness

 

[‘A Splash of Honey,’ by Christabelle Corea-Aturupane, published by BCONNECTED, 2025, reviewed by Malinda Seneviratne]
 

All lives are epic, even those that are brief. Epic lives are not always written, for not everyone is a writer or feels compelled to gather and string together indelible memories. Some lives are by choice lived privately. And scribes can be selective — they write, if at all, the stories of known personalities that are more public, even if they border on the notorious. Such stories sell.

All lives are epic and so was the life of Christabelle Euphelia Corea-Aturupane. She, in her later years, decided to write about moments and people that mattered most to her. Published not too long before she moved to regions inaccessible even by love, she called her recollections ‘A splash of honey.’ Sweet. As was she.  

I knew her as the mother of Harsha and Harinlal, two of the most gifted chess players Sri Lanka has produced, both national champions and at one time the highest rated players in the country. I saw her briefly at the funeral of her husband, Herbert, which took place in his home town of Kegalle, in 1980 I believe. Years later, actually decades later, I had the opportunity to meet her more often. This was at her son Harinlal’s place where chess friends from St Thomas’ Mount Lavinia and a couple of Royalists would meet to play chess and bridge and make merry in other ways. Those evenings would inevitably end with Aunty Christabelle accompanying that bunch of friends on the piano. Among them, R.D. Gunaratne could sing quite well. The others tried. She didn’t mind. She just played. She smiled. And addressed everyone as ‘darling.’

This book is not about her sons’ friends, but every page has her signature good-heartedness, celebration of life and especially good times with her near and dear, and of course her elegance.

In ‘A splash of honey’ the author gives the reader measured sweetness. She is honest in her recounting of incidents and people, meticulous in mentioning one and all, eloquent in description and perhaps a little coy when it comes to the warts and infirmities that are inevitable in individuals and collectives.

The book can be read as the history of a clan. The Coreas. The Coreas of Chilaw, to be precise. The author has made her intentions clear at the outset: a ‘desire to document one’s lineage and impart one’s knowledge.’ Following Kanin, she exercises ‘[T]he freedom to roam and rummage in the attic of [her] yesterdays,’ because ‘the ability to relive those parts of life that have been significant is a fight equal to life itself.’  

She has painted the Chilaw of her childhood with delicate strokes, having dipped her brushes in idyllic pigments to give us landscapes, culture and history. It’s not the attic of her yesterdays that she invites us to visit but a time and country far removed from the Chilaw and Sri Lanka we pass through or inhabit today.

Places obtain meaning on account of people they contain or are shaped by. For the author, it’s primarily family. Primarily clan, really. So it’s not grandparents, siblings, husband, children and grandchildren, but uncles and aunts, granduncles and grandaunts, cousins, nieces and nephews. Indeed it’s also about the other Coreas of Chilaw.

Coreas, as she points out, constitute one ‘C’ of the three Cs associated with Chilaw, the others being crabs and coconuts. She mentions a fourth following the ascension of Bishop Emeritus Duleep De Chickera of the Church of Ceylon: Committed Christians. Obviously, Chilaw or rather Halawatha (she has interjected the legends associated with that name as well!), was made of other people and other faiths, and these too she has detailed in their vocations, fervor and faith.

They were aristocrats, clearly, not least of all on account of a lineage traceable to national heroes such as Edirilla Bandara and possibly to Parakramabahu the Sixth and even earlier, Siri Sangabodhi. The aristocracy in Chilawan times, if you will, came primarily from wealth and vocation. Feudalism was more pronounced in those times the relevant hierarchies do find their way into the text, but certainly without the vulgar superiority and condescension characteristic of the aristocratic class. The author lays it out as is and with much grace as evident in the chapter titled ‘The Ayahs and the Carter.’

It is probably pertinent to interject here the notion that did the rounds some decades ago and perhaps finds traction even today in certain circles: ‘in Chilaw if you are not a Corea, you are a pariah!’ It’s probably something that less savoury sections of the clan coined. Christabelle Corea-Aturupane, to my knowledge, was too refined to indulge in the obnoxious. She is clearly proud of her family, but speaks as fondly of the non-Coreas of her childhood or the Chilaw of those times.

The book contains, as promised in the Prologue, ‘a wealth of fascinating tales of power, fame and love.’ These obviously must have had relevant undersides, those of powerlessness, infamy and heartbreak or hate, but those are not what the author was fascinated with. The absences don’t detract too much. To the extent that the history of people and families and especially clans are windows into the history of the places they inhabit, ‘A splash of honey,’ would certainly pique the interests of the historian.

All lives are epic and no journey tracing lineage can be expected to capture even the most pertinent of the epic-slices of each and every individual mentioned. The author has picked and chosen. She writes of her Uncle Stanley’s pranks and the escapades of her brother Ranjith with great delight. Others are mentioned in passing when she recounts holidays and special occasions, family routines and parental priorities, playmates and pastimes, and even penpals.

There’s a chapter on ‘treasured memories,’ but that’s what the entire book is about. We walk with Christabelle when she was a child, we watch her as she grows into a beautiful young woman and wish somehow that we were privileged to know of the years when she was a wife, a mother and later a grandmother. Her focus however is Chilaw and the Coreas, not Mount Lavinia and the Aturupanes, places and people privileged to be graced by her presence no doubt.

She was 90 when she put these recollections together. One cannot help but think that Christabelle has roamed freely in the yesterdays of her life and given fresh life to what may have otherwise gathered dust and perished in the attics she rummaged in. She was a pianist and a painter. The book is musical. It is a work of art, made that much more elegant by the team at BCONNECTED (Pvt) Ltd who coordinated, edited, designed and printed the book.

Christabelle Corea-Aturupane has offered facets of a Chilaw that is no more and a clan which, though old, continues to generate youthfulness. It’s a gift to the Coreas. It could inspire other families, aristocrat or otherwise, to record stories that don’t often get written or told.

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That Lass!

 

Jude Lucksiri Fernando is an old friend. When I entered campus, he was just moving out, but for a few months, i.e. before he got the results of his final year exam, we were fellow undergraduates. My first encounter with him was in an abridged production of ‘Galileo’ by Bertold Brecht. Prof Ashley Halpe did an excellent job of both the script and direction and the Peradeniya production won that year’s Inter-University Drama Competition.

Anyway, Jude played the Pope. I was Galileo’s student, Andrea Sarti. Jude was probably the only leftist among English Medium students of the Arts Faculty. We had a lot to talk about. And we’ve been talking for forty years now. Off and on. Randomly. A few times in the USA and more times in Sri Lanka. And this morning too. At the Commons Coffeeshop. A place we both frequent.

As always we spoke of what’s what and what’s not in the world and our beautiful island. And of Rolls-Rice. Yes, not Rolls-Royce. He told me about a poem he wrote and shared it with me: ‘ROLLS-RICE Cars In Sri Lanka.’ It’s long. Too long to quote in full, but you can find it online. But here’s how it starts:

They—Plumeria and Gem—praise the engine's brassy brag,
Never mind the seed and sow, the sunrise in a bag.
Never mind the husks that mountain where the backstreets choke—
Their Rolls-Rice shines like "success," a rich man's private joke.
Glow fades; the harvest remains.

Plumeria. That’s another name for ‘Frangipani,’ which we know as ‘Araliya.’  Plumeria honoured the French botanist Charles Plumier, a Catholic monk who traveled what came to be known as the Americas, documenting plant and animal species. Frangipani is a name owed to the Italian family by that name credited with the creation of a synthetic perfume resembling the fragrance of the ‘Araliya.’

Jude is of course referring to the rice moguls whose Sinhala names could be translated as ‘Plumeria’ and ‘Gem’ and their fascination with super expensive vehicles. Rolls-Royces. It’s all about political economy, obviously, with a dash of his characteristic wit. I believe ‘ROLLS-RICE Cars in Sri Lanka’ deserves to be a permanent feature on any anthology of modern Sri Lankan poetry in English.

Jude said, ‘Plumeria refers to…’ and I completed the sentence, ‘Araliya.’ That’s because I had once checked the etymology for the English name of the flower. I knew it was ‘Frangipani,’ but I wondered how that name had been coined. It had nothing to do with flowers and fragrances in that it was not botany-related. Fragrance there was, of course, and texture as well, not too unlike that of the ‘Araliya.’ It had to do with a little girl’s curiosity in sequestered times. Briefly, 88-89.

She had, she told me, climbed the Araliya tree in her garden so she could peep over the world and gaze upon the world outside or rather that tiny sliver of a few square meters that time and politics yielded to curious eyes such as those owned by her. 

The name ‘Araliya’ has always fascinated me. I know that it is a name some parents give their daughters. I know it’s a flower. Somehow, in my mind, it always splintered: 'ara + liya’ or ‘that lass.’

Her name isn’t Araliya, but she is nevertheless a lass. She’s close and yet far away. Can be breathed, but never touched and therefore 'That-Lass,’ and not ‘This-Lass.’

So I wrote and titled what I wrote ‘Araliya’ a long, long time ago. 

Araliya

Explorers long ago
— or brigands, conquistadors or spice-bandits —
brought Plumerian gifts
beads for the heathens
or a little piece of home

We have since lost the name
and re-named:
The family Frangipani of Italy
supplanted  the botanical monk Plumier
but here in tropical lyricism
the slip, supple grace inspired:
Ara-Liya, ‘that lass’

That lass
upon the branches
peeping over a wall
breaking curfews
perfuming in subtleties unrecorded

A flower correctly named.

No political economy here. No critique. No wit. A lesser poem, some may say, but this is not about relative merits of literary endeavours. I love Jude’s poem. He may or may not like my ‘Araliya.’ There's a glow, though. I've noticed it. And there are harvests that remain but will not be stolen.

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. malindadocs@gmail.com. This article was first published in the Daily News.

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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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