On blindness, blindfolding and eye-transparency

A NECESSARY RE-POST

Conversations don’t end when people take leave of one another.  We are made of conversation remnant, other people’s thoughts interacting with conversations heard, information culled from people, event and the encyclopedias we have perused with senses.  Words have legs, thoughts have wings. 

Last Friday, I made an observation: ‘if someone’s eyes are not transparent, I will never trust him’.  There was a referent, a real person.  It was just a mentioning of a rule-of-thumb I’ve picked up along the way through lives and living, being used and abused, just like any other detection-device that people develop through experience.

My friend, who was present, wrote a beautiful commentary based on that single assertion, titled ‘Blindfolding the charms of transparent eyes’. It was a reflection on eyes and transparency, those who knew, especially those belonging to women.  It had occurred to him that he hadn’t really looked into their eyes and examined them for transparency. He submitted that he had instead chosen to blindfold himself with love and other sentiments.  When the blindfold was removed little was left, he wrote.

He maintained that some eyes prevented him from seeing hearts, some delusional (‘most’, he added).

He made me re-think eyes. 

I wondered, given the number of times that I have trusted eyes and believed them to mirror heart, whether there’s any truth about the transparency or otherwise of eyes in the matter of revelation. I wondered if it was the flaws of seeing rather than the seen that made for misreading. 

It took me to a short story written by Liyanage Amarakeerthi almost twenty years ago.  If I remember right, a woman asks a man if he is deceiving her (‘maava ravattanavada?  Or was it ‘maava ravattannada hadadde’, are you trying to deceive me?).  The man responds ‘mata one oyaava ravattanna nemie, oyath ekka revatenna!’ (I don’t want to deceive you; I want to be deceived with you).   

Love-blindness explains a lot and maybe whoever came up with the dictum ‘love is blind’ might have been on to something regarding eyes and transparency. 

My friend seems to have seen something important: ‘yes, I know some eyes are non-transparent, but I love them’. 

People change, eyes change and transparency can be compromised. There are always degrees, in the transparent and the opaque when it comes to people we love and people who love us.  It holds for other too.  I was not talking of love when I came up with that line.  ‘Shifty eyes’ is a term that has connotations.  Back in the eighties there entered the Sinhala lexicon a term called ‘Rubber Ehe’ or the rubber-eye, meaning a false eye.  Someone who ‘puts’ the rubber-ehe is one who looks through you, refuses to acknowledge or deliberately snubs.  Lovers do these things, either because they’ve stopped seeing or are not interested in seeing or, in some cases, to feign un-seeing.  Sometimes people hurt just to test love. 

I am no eye-expert but I think for all their deceiving potential, eyes reveal even when they are ‘opaqued’. Or else, I like to think so, for I have over the years learned to be more wary than average when I encounter non-transparent eyes. 

But here’s something my articulate and perceptive friend, Rasika Jayakody can reflect on and perhaps write an equally beautiful comment about:

‘Is the finality with which doors are closed designed to test the blindness of blind love?’

It is something I wrote about 7 years ago.  It was love-wrought and about a ‘de-transparenting’ of eyes.  In the un-blinding that followed, though, I found things to be more transparent than I believed them to be.  Those eyes that inspired the question were, all things considered, more honest than most eyes I’ve encountered.  Maybe it was because she un-blindfolded herself. 

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There’s a catch coming your way, are you ready baby?

Some would say that the second cricket test between Sri Lanka and India (2010) ranks among the most boring affairs in remembered history.  Weak attacks being biffed around the park by some top notch batsmen and even by some tailenders is not a good ad for test cricket.  People complained about the wicket.  Mahela Jayawardena, however, said it was not just ‘pitch’, but that bowling attacks that lacked sting, good batting and not holding on to the half-chances determined the result. 

‘What ifs’ make for interesting fantasies.  We can’t really tell what directions things could have gone if this and not that was done. Cricket is entertaining (or can be) but it is not theatre and the players, umpires, commentators, selectors, managers, reserves, spectators, scribes and others are not there to recite lines and move hither and thither according to some ‘by-hearted’ script. Yes, there’s match-fixing, but I like to think that not everything is ‘fixed’.  Things like the Dil-Scoop give me hope.

The pitch of course can account for much of the story, given the human resources on show.  On the other hand, crazy things can happen if one seizes the half-chances that come one’s way.  I was reading a short while ago, for example, how in 1983 Surrey was bundled out for 14 runs by Essex.  Neil Foster and Norbert Phillip had ripped through the batting and players had to be dragged out of their end-of-the-day showers to go bat. Sylvester Clarke, it is said, had gone out to the middle without any socks and with soap all over his head.   There was an element of luck of course, but confidence, fading light, a pitch that all of a sudden was swing and seam friendly and of course rank bad batting combined to give an unexpected twist to the day’s story.  

There was a what-if in the Second Test between Sri Lanka and India in 2010.  It happened in the 66^th over of India’s first innings.  The second ball.  Dilhara Fernando bounced outside the off and Sachin Tendulkar tried to upper cut it and nicked it.  Prasanna Jayawardena, the best keeper in test cricket, couldn’t hold on to it.  By the time Prasanna held on to Tendulkar’s second nick (this time off Dilshan), the maestro had progressed to 203 and India had added 367 runs more. India was finally bowled out for 707, 65 ahead of what had at one point appeared to be a match-winning Sri Lankan total (642 for 4). 

Theoretically, India could have still reached 700 had Tendulkar been dismissed for 29.  Theoretically India might have collapsed for less than 300.  We can never tell.  This is why you are expected to hang on to the once-in-50-overs half-chance that might come your way, especially if it’s a batting track and if you don’t have someone like Muttiah Muralitharan (who could turn the ball even on a tarred road) on your side.

This is not a cricket story. It is the story of anyone and everyone against whom the odds are stacked, by dint of circumstance or resource endowment or anything else.  This side of breaking rules/laws (that’s possible too) and this side of not being guided by ethical concerns, what this means is vigilance, determination, stamina and a minimum degree of faith in the laws of nature or in the very least the opposition being prone to error on account of being humanly frail. 

Tendulkar is the world’s greatest batsman, but he does get out. He has played in 168 tests and come to the crease 274 times.  He’s been dismissed a total of 245 times.  Not infallible.  He averages over 50 runs per at-bat, true, but he’s been dismissed for small scores.  His record shows that he’s consistent and dangerous.  One cannot afford to give such a formidable opponent a second chance. 

So if you think the odds are against you, take heart.  Your chances are rarely at ‘zero’.  There’s always a slim chance.  That could make a difference.  It requires you to be alert though.  The game-changing moment may come in the next second or the next decade; what’s important to remember is that it could arrive the next moment.  Given odds, it is better not to take your eye away for what this might mean is a life time of meaningless fantasizing about the ‘what if’ moment that was not. 

All this subject of course to the caveat pregnant in the question, ‘is it worth it?’  There’s a Sachin Tendulkar out there who might nick it your way.  Are you ready? 

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She paints the poetry of our lives in colours and lines

She's one of the softest people I have met in my entire life.  That softness was something I first experienced long before I actually met her.  Champani Devika was part of my growing up.  One day, about 10 years ago, someone from the Divaina newspaper came over to the Island editorial.  She came with Champani Devika and introduced me to her.  So I sat and asked her questions and I typed out her responses.  Those notes became an article for that Sunday.  Since then I've met her many times and she's remained as soft.  I think of her now and then, and I did a few minutes ago.  So I dug up that article.  So I am sharing. 

"Champani Devika" is a name from a long time ago. I remember seeing this name scrawled under paintings reproduced in the Island and the Divaina. They were elegant creations clearly the product of someone who knew line and colour, but what really made me "look" for them every week was the few lines of poetry that accompanied the picture. I cannot forget the pastel shades, the blending of images and the kavi sankalpana that complemented these because I used to cut and collect them; for the politics, the philosophy and poetry.

All names have flesh and blood behind them. They have childhoods, there is growing up and learning. "Champani Deepika" is not an exception. The question "who is she?" (or "who is he" for that matter) often draws forth a person in all the colours and tones that make up a personality. In an artiste, these shades can be bold or soft, the lines faint or strong. The picture always demands a lingering gaze.

Champani Devika was born in Biyagama. Her father, who later became a principal, used to teach painting and geography. Interestingly, her father never formally taught her to draw, and yet he did encourage her as a child. "He gave me books and colours and allowed me to draw on the walls of the house. In fact the house was not colour washed until I was 10." Unlike other children who would wait impatiently until their fathers came home to explore the pockets for sweets and chocolate, Champani was only interested in taking the pieces of chalk he brought home. She used to trace the cracks in the cement with her colours and this may very well have helped her master the "line".

There would have been general recognition of the young girl’s latent talent in the family circle for all the gifts she received on birthdays or when she did well in school were pastels and water colours. She used to come home with her uncle, who taught in a nearby school. She would wait in his class until the lesson was over. Her uncle used to draw a line on the blackboard, separating a section for her to doodle.

Champani secured the best results in her school, Biyagama Maha Vidyala, at the NCGE and qualified to enter the science stream. "I wanted to enter the arts section, but no one in the family approved. There was a teacher named Subadra Jayasekera and she was the only one who supported me. I cried and insisted that I be allowed to take the subjects of my choice. Finally, my father relented, but not before making me promise that I would not blame him later on in life." As things turned out, she hasn’t had reason to complain.

She had taken Sinhala, Buddhist Civilisation, Art and Economics for her Advanced Level Examination and entered the University of Kelaniya where she completed her degree in Fine Arts. While in the university, Champani had held two solo exhibitions. She had been the first woman to hold an exhibition at Kelaniya.

What we and what we become is but a collage of the pieces of earth that we have walked, and Champani’s work is a good example of this. She began her career as an artist for the women’s weekly, Navaliya, in 1985. During the same year she was awarded a scholarship by the Chinese government to learn Chinese at the Beijing Language Institute. She went on to follow a course of advanaced studies at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in China, from 1986-1988, and later completed a Masters in Fine Arts at the same academy. Her thesis was a comparative study of frescoes in Sri Lanka and China.

She returned to China for six months in the early nineties to study Chinese traditional paintings and in particular the kum-bi technique, i.e. the use of the "fine brush". "I felt a certain affinity to this technique. In fact this became popular on account of the things I painted for the newspapers, so I continued with this style"

Artistes teach us many things. Some artists are by profession teachers. Champani has worked as an art teacher from 1993. She has also been a visiting lecturer from time to time at the University of Kelaniya and the Post Graduate Institute of Archaeology, where she has taught Chinese Art History and Painting.

Typically, most painters are not known outside the fraternity of painters and close associates. That Champani is "familiar" to a wider audience is perhaps due to her contributions to the Island and the Sunday Edition of the Divaina. She drew for the Saturday Magazine and the Tuesday Magazine of the Island between 1991 and 1996, Sisira Pathiravithana translating her poetry into English. Her contributions to the Divaina has been relatively small, 20 paintings between 1992 and 1993.

Champani believes that she learnt the practical "basics" of painting in China, where she had to follow a strict and disciplined course of studies and could develop her fascination with the rekhsva . It was from China that she "picked up" light colours and these have been a virtual signature in her paintings. She had been particularly interested in "Scholar’s Paintings". She explained, "they were educated people who could pain and could also write poetry; there was philosophy in what they drew". She too had written poetry from the time she was a child, but it was in China that she realised that what she had practices had actually been an ancient tradition.

"I too have a philosophy or a dekma. This is heavily influenced by Buddhist philosophy. I am inspired by the pancha seelaya (The Five Precepts) and the madyama prathipadava (The Middle Path). My paintings are neither artificial nor totally natural, but something in between these extremes and are political commentaries of a kind. I use symbols, like many others. You might notice that the vast majority of my paintings contain a Bo leaf. This represent my kinship with nature and Buddhist philosophy."

Since her first exhibition held at the University of Kelaniya, Champani has held nine solo exhibitions, both in Sri Lanka and in China. Her 10th exhibition will be held at the Allah Bux Art Gallery in Lahore, Pakistan. The exhibition has been organised by her artist friends in Pakistan and will contain 37 paintings along with the relevant poetry.

Champani says that although there have been painters who have admired and appreciated her work, her contemporaries in Sri Lanka have been mostly critical. When I told her that I used to cut and collect the ones that appeared in the Island and the Divaina, she said "you know, almost everyone I have met have said that". How does one really measure the worth of a painter? Popularity? In a sense, yes. The truly great are loved by the people and by students of art who can differentiate the exceptional from the excellent.

In the end, time will also count, for the exceptional is timeless, so to speak. Champani touches a chord in our hearts because she employs her keen perception and mastery of colour and line to lay bare the human condition, both in the timelessness of certain subjects, and the immediacy and persisting character of the political moment. Let the art critic have his comment. For now, at this stage of her career, she can be happy that she is being "read". And appreciated.

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Journeying with Mahagama Sekera

[A group of young Sri Lanka poets plans to bring out a magazine devoted to poetry, 'Poetics'.  They wanted me to translate a few poems from Sinhala to English.  Among them was an oft-quoted poem by Mahagama Sekera, arguably the most versatile Sri Lankan literary figure of the 1960s and 1970s whose untimely demise was, in retrospect, a monumental tragedy to Sinhala literature and especially the Sinhala poem.  I translated the poem and posted it in my poetry blog, www.malindapoems.blogspot.com.  You can find it here.  I thought those who are not familiar with the poet might find it useful to read a kind of introduction.  This was first published in 'The Island', January 21, 2001.  Another piece on Sekara was published about a year later.  For more information, visit http://mahagamasekera.org/] 

I do not know how to commemorate a dead poet. And I do not know why one should commemorate at all, poets or non-poets. If all life is transient, everything is subject to the law of decay, and this includes the law itself. People die, memories too die. Commemoration then, let me offer tentatively, is perhaps a marking of time, more of one’s passing than the passing of the dead. Mahagama Sekera, one of the best loved and celebrated Sinhala poets in recent times, might not have disagreed.

Our lives are but a trace left by the tide, soon to be washed away or altered by wave upon wave breaking randomly, unevenly. The shifting line makes for poetry, and as such, a soft gaze falling cannot hurt, which is probably why Sekera’s poetry envelopes the reader almost without notice.

It is twenty five years since Mahagama Sekera died, the number of years being less important of course than the fact of his passing away. It is not that I had forgotten him, or that I remember him with any degree of regularity. I do remember though that it was just a few months after his death that I first encountered the man. It was through a song, "Anna balan sanda," that perennial melody familiar to several generations now. The music teacher did not offer an explication of the song for us, and it was passed on with no mention of the author.

So it took many years for me to learn who Sekera was. Then, as now, I find that Sekera has come and gone and returned, again and again. It does not take too long, however, to discover the ease with which he infused rhythm into his words, a faculty which made possible a musical rendering of his poetry. Perhaps this is why there are those who believe that it was Sekera who made Amaradeva great, and some who believe the reverse is true too.

In any event, there has been a spate of articles about Sekera in the Sinhala press over the past week or so. As I read the many ways in which the man seemed to have affected people, my thoughts went back to January 1997 when a group of students in Peradeniya who went by the name Hantane Nava Parapura organised a "Sekera Semaruma".

There were a couple of short talks delivered by university lecturers where Sekera’s work was examined, followed by a general discussion. If the lectures gave the audience Sekera in a nutshell, the discussion served to free the poet from all pet frameworks. Sekera came alive in that most vibrant airing of views and his being floated unfettered all over the Arts Theater. I found then too that there was no lack of people wanting to claim him as their own.

There was a young student belonging to the Young Socialists who claimed that Sekera’s sensibilities were eminently Marxian, while a Buddhist monk said that his poetry epitomised the Buddhist approach to life. A third said that he recommended Sekera’s Prabuddha to anyone who wanted an answer to the question "What is Jathika Chintanaya?" Finally, a Philosophy student observed that the length of the ideological spectrum from which these claims arrived itself points to the richness of Sekera’s work and reflects the fact that he touched so many people deeply. Sekera, as my father once said, like the sky, is not less private although he belongs to us all.

As I glanced through the papers last Sunday, a piece in the Divaina caught my attention. Sugara, commenting on the commemoration of Sekera’s 25th death anniversary, had something like this to say:

"Sekera’s verse; honed with a sensitivity to recognise humanity and life, an understanding of tradition and heritage, and an unbounded compassion to human beings; was not only the language of his heart, it was the mark of his genius. It is true that he traversed his creative ocean as a novelist, filmmaker and an artist; but it was the poem that blossomed in his heart as a lotus, exuding fragrance. Has this poetic path been adequately reviewed? We are curious to know if the Sinhala poetic form, which Sekera explored and indeed whose traditional boundaries he shattered as he searched for its identity, has been subject to serious inquiry. Do the various schools of Sekera devotees possess such eyes as are necessary for this?"

I am poorly equipped to take on the task of dissecting or otherwise engaging with Sinhala poetry. I am not sure if Sekera wanted such a clinical treatment of his poetry in the first place. His poetry has the rare quality of humility, he shies away from investigation and implores the reader not to search for him in his work. Thus he consciously recognised the full agentic power of the reader and only speaks of "hopes". Sekera never demanded. This is evident in the introductory poem in the collection Sakvalihini titled "Mage kaviyen oba dakinna" (view yourself in my poem), which I have translated below. It is indeed a gentle and very revealing note on how Sekera wanted to be read, or, more precisely, how he ought not to be read, and why.

"Look not for me in my poem.

You and I, and all of us

are journeying towards a morning star

shining at the far end of a dim sky,

knowing and not knowing that we are.

Someday, all of you

will encounter the great mountains

and steep cliffs

I meet along the way.

When you stumble and lose your way

among the many traps along the path,

when your body is soiled

by the mud showered by untruths,

when, bludgeoned, you cling

to the earth with weak hands,

when that day you weep helplessly

just as I have wept,

my poetry will becomes yours.

Friend! Then, without searching,

find yourself and not me in my verse.

When the blood that flows from my feet

as they break upon thorns and hard gravel,

points out the correct path from those that lead astray,

and you come to your journey’s end

to find the morning star,
if you happen to do so before me,

a felicitation of flowers will bloom for your feet.

Among those petals, find me."

I cannot know how others read Sekera. Speaking for myself, I have been lifted, empowered, saddened, chastised and humbled by Sekera and this only because his poetry is a mirror that allows us to see ourselves. He has given me tears and laughter, and these have filled the lamps I carry and have fed the feeble flames that I have counted on in certain dark and dreadful days. Perhaps there will be a flower for me someday. Hopefully, in the spirit with which Sekera wrote, it will be such a garden where the best in the human being flourishes, if only because of the collective character of the journey. That will certainly be a felicitation, a celebration where some of us can think of Sekera and be grateful that he walked on this earth, and of course that he traced his journeys with the exquisite play of word and metaphor.

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The imperatives of protection

In 1978, Sri Lanka was devastated by a cyclone, especially the East Coast.  Anton Jones, given to highlighting in song all kinds of satya siddheen’ (true events), naturally, put together words and music.  Two lines are etched in my mind:

‘Madakalapuwa, ampare, polonnaruwa, samanthurai…e hema nagarema diyen yata une

Mannarama, kanthalai, pothuvil, kalmunai natambun vage aethata penune’

[Batticaloa, Ampara, Polonnaruwa and Samanthurai – flooded they all were

Mannar, Kanthali, Pothuvil and Kalmunai – reduced to ruins they all were]

All those name roll off the tongue like a melody and that has to do with the lyricality, if you will, of language, both in the Sinhala original and Tamil re-invention.  Anton Jones has placed them well and thereby enhances, not creates, the melodious configuration of syllable and place name. 

The truth is that we can string together many names and create a lilting melody, which I am sure is not something that is Sri Lanka specific.  The names that roll off the tongue today, lyrical as they are, are as marked by tragedy as those of Anton Jones’ song: Kahawatte, Tangalle, Akuressa and Kirulapone.  In 1978 it was of ‘natural disaster’ that Jones sang; what we have now is not natural, it is man-made and ‘man’ is not a gender-neutral term. 

In 1978 strong winds brought down trees, swept away rooftops, unleashed floods, destroyed crops and communities.  In 2012 we are taking of innocence lost, childhoods ruined, vulnerabilities preyed on and households that will forever be marked with trauma, fear and the irrecoverable.  That’s nice-speak.  What we have is breaking into houses, assault and battery, sexual molestation, rape, gang rape and murder.  The stories have made headlines on consecutive days.  It’s a ‘breaking story’ that keeps breaking again and again.  

And yet, it would be erroneous to tag ‘recent’ to this phenomenon or associate it with the infrequency and randomness of a cyclone.  It is quite possible that the word ‘phenomenon’ was spawned by unusual frequency of reportage, the rape that is and not the gruesome murders in Kahawatte.  The most pertinent and disturbing element of rape is under-reportage, especially when it comes to child abuse, date rape and sexual violence in domestic situations. 

Last week there were two demonstrations in Colombo, one about violence against women and one about child abuse, especially sexual molestation including rape.   An online poll conducted by ‘The Nation’ (www.nation.lk) showed that over 80% recommended the death penalty for those accused of raping children.  This indicates that people consider this the ultimate crime and as such deserving of the maximum punishment.  ‘The Nation’ has editorially expressed grave concern about the fact that politicians, their henchman and public officials have been implicated in such dastardly transgressions.  Power and association with power are clearly related to the perpetration of these crimes.  This fact alone is not enough, of course; what is pertinent is the notion that power and power-association are seen as getaway clauses by these criminals. 

The first step then is to punish.  For this, law enforcement should be freed of the fetters of political interference. Easier said than done.  There’s always a someone who knows someone who knows someone who has his fingers on strings that can pull the law this way or that.  It has happened and is happening.  Joolampitiya Amare is only the most recent beneficiary of strings.  Law-enforcers, like law-makers, have been implicated not in complicity but in perpetration.  And those who are clean are handicapped by political interference; each ‘let-off’ further incapacitating them.  Strong words from the President and the IGP are just not enough.  Political culture rebels against justice and sides with perpetrator.  It overrules institution and mechanism. 

Even if the guilty are brought to book, this will not ensure that others will not get raped, will not be murdered.  Deterrence stops some, not all, and where social and emotional factors help hide crime, innocence will be destroyed, children scarred and women raped.  Familiarity is not, therefore, insurance and comfort but something that has, unfortunately, become reason to warrant wariness.  That’s a sad indictment on society as a whole.

It means that not only is the state not a bulwark against these kinds of aggression, the household itself is not safe for it is a site of violence.  How does the state police a household?  It cannot be done.  Parents have to be vigilant, but parents and family alone, won’t deliver security, especially since a large number of child abusers happen to be ‘family’.  There has to be education all around, not just of children but of adults.  Parents have to learn to read the signs of threat and assess vulnerability of an entire range of situations.  It is a sad thing that no one can be fully trusted, but we have come to that and for this reason only full vigilance by everyone about everyone can combat this threat.  

The cyclone arrived, devastated and blew away.  This, however, is not a phenomenon that will blow over.  It will blow over the particular household whose inmates will cope as best they can, but threat is a hooded thief prowling the streets 24/7.  Like terrorists, they prey on the slightest error. 

The Government must do its part and this involves re-hauling the entire law enforcement apparatus; yes the re-establishment of an effective independent police commission or its equivalent.  The citizen must do his/her part.  That’s you and I.  The lyric has been taken out of name and life.  We have to recover it.  Together.  

[published in 'The Nation', July 22, 2012] 

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Justice Besieged

In Mannar, it is alleged that a judge was threatened.  It is not ‘alleged’ that the court house was damaged; it is a fact.  Not the first time.  We have had judges being booed.  We have had people being shot in court houses.  And we have had judges embarrassing themselves, their vocation and the institutions of justice.  

No institution is perfect and no individual a saint.  That’s given.  This is why there is a thing called social contract.  This is why there are things called checks and balances.  This is why the notion of ‘separation of power’ is a fundamental tenet of a constitutional democracy.  Nations have mechanism which can be used to seek redress if believed to have been wronged.  The bottom line: the ‘aggrieved’ must defer to institution and procedure and cannot take law into own hands!  In this instance, judge and judgment have been questions, but outside the legal framework and in ways that are clearly out of order.  It doesn’t help the cause of justice; it only subverts it.

Each transgression that is not responded to is a brick taken out of the edifice of justice.  That edifice has now lost many bricks.  It is good that the President has ordered a probe into the incident, but this measure itself indicates institutional and procedural inadequacy.  The book should contain mechanism to respond and not wait on presidential directive. In other words, ‘Mannar’ didn’t begin in Mannar but is just a road-stop on a long journey of the lawless, picking one brick here and another there.

The President can and must direct, but in this case the focus should be on a malady that is larger than ‘Mannar’ and is rooted in a culture of inaction and impunity.  

[Part II of 'The Nation' Editorial, July 22, 2012] 

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Our cultural icons

Reality shows are the rage these days.  If all the stars of these reality shows actually shed light, we would not worry about the vagaries of the weather or fluctuations in the oil price.  Every years, on almost every television channel, we see stars and star-aspirants.  Thousands get together to ensure that a few individuals enjoy a moment of fame.  Few thereafter would remember the names of the particular stars, but this won’t stop thousands from doing the same for another set of individuals the following year.

Stars come and go. They shine for awhile, are applauded, gone crazy over and then forgotten, like in the well known Eagles song ‘New Kid in Town’: ‘They will never forget you till somebody new comes along’.

Icons are different.  Somebody new coming along does not dislodge icons from cultural firmaments.  What they produce continues to fragrance the world long after they’ve passed on.  That reverberation is perhaps the true test of greatness, for no communications campaign however sophisticated and fund-rich it may be, can exact and retain loyalty for decades and decades.  Stars have shelf life, icons are timeless. 

Icons, typically, do not seek immortality.  And yet, they are honoured not just by overwhelming public respect and adoration but by the conferring of title.  That recognition, though un-sought, is important, less for the recognized as for the recognizing, for it affirms the fact that a nation appreciates the contributions of the particular individuals.

In Sri Lanka, this ‘recognition’ is called Sri Lankabhimanya or Lankabhimanya (The Pride of Sri Lanka).  It is awarded by the President and is the highest civil honor, conferred for exceptionally outstanding and most distinguished services to the nation.  The first recipient was the late Sir Arthur C Clarke, in 2005.  Lakshman Kadirgamar was conferred the title posthumously the same year.  Thereafter, in 2007, A.T. Ariyaratne, Lester James Peries and Christopher Weeramantry were similarly honored.

Clearly, there are many individuals who came before any of the above who richly deserved the title.  Any nation with a recorded history of 2500 years would have more than a handful of icons and if the posthumous clause is evoked, we could literary have hundreds if not thousands deserving the title. If we were to look at the past few decades alone, we would have, for example, Premasiri Khemadasa, Rev Fr. Marcelline Jayakody, Martin Wickramasinghe, Ediriweera Sarachchandra and Chitrasena. 

What of the present, though, and what of the living?  There are three indisputable cultural icons alive today, Dr Lester J Peiris (cinema), Gunadasa Amarasekera (literature) and W D Amaradeva (music).  The first has already received this rare honour.  The other two are both in their eighties now and, as is typical of iconic personalities, continue to stimulate and hone our cultural sensibilities.   

W.D. Amaradeva is not a reality-show pop-up and neither is Gunadasa Amarasekera.  Both are indefatigable.  Their commitment to their chosen mediums of expression is marked by dedication, a striving for perfection and most importantly underlined by love for the country, its history and heritage and recognition of all this as source of learning, creating and celebrating the aesthetic. 

Like all of us, they will pass.  They, unlike most of us, will be eulogized, accorded posthumous tributes such as postage stamps, memorial lectures and name-prefixes to institutions relevant to their particular fields.  If icons are undeserving of anything it is this after-thought type of tribute.  They are deserving of the highest honor, right now.  If not, we would be doing a disservice to these exceptional fellow-citizens and doing ourselves a disservice in the process. 

[Editorial, 'The Nation', July 22, 2012]

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ANURALOKAYA: Facets of a 33-year long journey

Anura Shrinath was not encouraged to draw when he was a child.  His father, a labourer by profession had been an artist in his own right, but wanted Anura to walk the science-road to a different kind of profession.  The problem was that he attended Lumbini.  He couldn’t escape ‘art’.  This, and the fact that he grew up surrounded by his father’s paintings saw the young man learning the craft his father had not recommended. 

Anura, following paternal instruction, studied biology for his A/Ls, but a chance encounter with the artist P.A. Leelaratne turned hobby into profession.  Leelaratne introduced young Anura to the celebrated cartoonist Cammilus Perera who helped him find a job as a cartoonist for the comic-strip paper ‘Suhada’ in 1980.  Later that year, when Upali Newspapers was launched, he had been hired as an artist for the ‘Chitramitra’ cartoon paper.  Since then he has worked in several such newspapers and created countless comic strips which naturally earned him a considerable number of fans. 

With the decline of chitrakatha or comics in the country and the open economy moving to top gear it was natural that Anura moved to advertising.  After a few years in some of the top advertising agencies, Anura reinvented himself as a freelance artist.  Clearly, his freedom-need was too much to suffer the constraints of briefs and briefing.  Apparently it was not just brief-straightjacketing.  He believes that advertising lost its ‘art’ somewhere down the line.  It became easier thanks to new technologies and sophisticated but user-friendly software.  He found that the aesthetic quality suffers and moreover got devalued or even ignored.  Ads became monotonous.  Just a matter of mixing photo and text.  Earlier, he claimed, ads were like paintings.  He recalled a time when people spent a lot of time looking at print ads, enjoying the aesthetic in them.  Today, he laments, there is a conspicuous neglect of detail and that this is replicated in hoardings and other outdoor advertisements.

So he went out of advertising.  This did not mean that advertising left him of course.  He would take on assignments now and then but never so much that he had to compromise the time and space needed for his independent creative pursuits. 

‘There are far better artists in advertising, but they don’t have time to paint.  I have time and space and so I have things to show.’

He draws a lot.  He paints all kinds of things, some for specific purposes, some for pure personal exploration and expression.   This is evident in the collection that will be open to public perusal from August 2-5, 2012 at the National Art Gallery.  ‘Anuralokaya’, a name suggested by his friend Aman Ashroff, is eclectic in terms of subject and choice of material.  It is almost like an exhibition put together by several artists. This itself points to Anura Shirnaths versatility.  There are portraits of the famous.  He paints cars, draws cartoons, book covers and greeting cards.  Each one of them has a story. 

The painting of the late singer Gunadasa Kapuge was based on a photograph by Sisira Wijetunga.  It was drawn for the Lanka newspaper when Kapuge died.  It is a painting that always comes up in google images if one went looking for Kapuge.  ‘Much used’ is the conclusion.  ‘Not acknowledged’ too, can be concluded.  He’s done book covers for many of Prof. J.B. Dissanayaka’s publications, some of which will be exhibited.  One of the book covers, that of the novel ‘Budun Nodesoo Daham’ (Sermons not delivered by the Buddha), was actually a Vesak card he had designed for ‘Rasa FM’, a radio station catering to Sri Lankans in Australia. 

Perhaps the most dramatic story is that of a railway track in the hills, hugging a hill and backgrounded by enough sky to indicate chasm. 

‘It was purchased by A.S. Jayawardena, then Governor, Central Bank.  The painting was destroyed during the LTTE attack on the Central Bank.  I re-painted it.  It was picked up at the Kala Pola by a retired judge, who purchased and reserved it.  Mr. Jayawardena, who happened to be strolling through the Kala Pola inquired about it.  I painted it all over again for the Central Bank, and re-painted it for this exhibition.’

That’s a ‘real’ location, but not all is transcription.  The painting titled ‘Badulu Kochchiya’ or the Badulla Train shows a non-existent landscape.  Breathtaking.  And yet, Anura’s imagination doesn’t always produce wide-eyeing.  Some of the ‘fantasy’ reveals a deeply reflective mind and a man who is not completely at ease in the world he inhabits. 

There is one painting which seems like a still from the cartoon film ‘Antz’ or ‘A Bug’s Life’.  He explains: ‘It’s a world made of all the good people, those who are not interested in fighting one another, who help one another, who make this world safer, softer and more beautiful’.  That idyllic hope finds expression in a lot of his paintings, especially of children.  The philosophy behind that hope is captured beautifully in the aforementioned Vesak card, featured on this page. 

Anura knows history and politics.  He captures not just known-figure, but the depth of character that makes them world-known. It comes out of attention to detail and knowledge of personality and place in his history.  He obviously knows cinema, theatre and music, for personalities of these fields have inspired him to sketch and paint.  And yet, there’s such a child in this man, that much too is clear.  Why else would he take so much trouble to paint antique cars, sketch soccer players and draw cartoons? 

According to Anura, this diversity of interest and medium as well as the corresponding versatility in subject matter is born of fear: ‘I am terrified of monotony’.   This fear, apparently, worked well for him when he drew comics: kathaven kathava venas (no two stories are alike).  

It is only recently that Anura started putting signature to his work.  Few would know that the amazing ‘cut-out’ for Asoka Handagama’s film ‘Vidu’ was one of Anura’s creations.  It shows not just creative ability, the rare skill of doing capture-all without compromising the tease-element, but the amazing work ethic of the artist.  It is not a matter of copy-paste, that easy and lazy device so over-used by art directors and layout artists.  That’s love for vocation.  Respect too.   

He describes the 32 years that have passed thus: ‘The journey that began in 1980 has been hard, colourful and sweet.  I have had the strength to overcome adversity, so I have no regrets.’  The life slices that will be on display at the exhibition speaks of that journey and the truth of the claim. 

He’s not done, yet.  Anura plans to bring out a monthly magazine called ‘Talks and Jokes’. All cartoons.  Something to look forward to!

[Pubished in the UNDO Section of The Nation, July 22, 2012] 

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