Ivanthi Fernando is a poem. So said her late husband Ravindra Devenigoda, long before I actually met her.
I first met ‘Deveni’ when he was a second-year undergraduate at the University of Peradeniya reading for a special degree in Sinhala about 25 years ago. Deveni could write. Deveni could draw. Deveni never completed his degree, but while an undergraduate published a collection of poetry titled ‘කමටහන් රුපියලයි (One rupee a koan).’ He suggested the name for a student group opposed to the JVP-dominated student union then in power: ‘හන්තාන නව පරපුර (The New Hantana Generation).’
That copywriting bent naturally led him to advertising. I don’t where he started off, but it was when he was at Grey Advertising that he met Ivanthi who was working there as an illustrator. And that’s when he noted she was a poem and said so:
නුඹ කිවියකි
සියලු පදරුත්
නිසි ලෙස
ගැලපුන
[You are a poem where all meaning is perfectly aligned]. He secured that account. They were married not too long afterwards]
Deveni divested himself of all burdens acquired and foisted upon his shoulders, emptied his heart-thesaurus and disappeared as he often did but this time forever around eight years ago. He left behind a poem and a couple of unfinished verses in the form of two very young boys, one an infant.
Deveni never got write the poems that would capture all of Ivanthi’s poetics. Life, obviously, doesn’t come with meaning perfectly aligned. The imperfections were accentuated by the fact that she’s now a widow, struggling to educate her children and in fact to put food on the table.
She has, however, remained determined. Quiet. Persevering. Resolute. A poem embodying every meaning of her circumstances.
Ivanthi never got back into advertising. She couldn’t. Odd jobs were never enough to make ends meet, so she designed t-shirts, drew portraits (pencil sketches and oils and other materials I am not unaware of) and story-boards for television commercials. That’s when she had time. And time is what she struggles to create amid attending to the basic needs of her children, working long hours to earn whatever money she could and taking care of her mother (her father, the rock in her family and her greatest strength, passed away a couple of years after Deveni died).
Art critics would know better; all I can see is Ivanthi’s poetry of engaging, resisting and being. ‘Ivan Art’ as she calls it is a commercial enterprise, but it is essentially a labor of love with regard to survival and fierce maternity.
For me, there’s versatility. There’s creativity — I’ve never imagined a deck of cards with one that has both king and queen; I don't know about kinds, but she's certainly a queen. She’s ‘placed’ her art in various settings and I feel that had Ivanthi studied interior design she would have really prospered.
Life doesn’t always offer ideal circumstances and we don’t always get to live on Easy Street in Happy Town. Avanthi certainly does not. And yet she creates happy things, be it a (commissioned) portrait or a t-shirt design that would delight a child.
I often wonder how it would have been had Deveni been around. She might have asked that question from herself many times, but then again life doesn’t give her space to daydream. Every hour, I know this for a fact, brings a different challenge and some days it is simply overwhelming. I can’t fathom how she manages to breathe.
But breathe she does and it’s her life breath that she mixes with colours and which congeals on the surfaces upon which she writes the poetry of her resolve.
Ivanthi has a Facebook page, Ivan Art. It’s a gallery and studio she can afford. I wish she had a bigger canvas. Maybe one day she will. I wish Deveni could see the poetic version of Ivanthi that lives, works, suffers and resists. Maybe he does. I wish I could write poetry like Deveni did. All I know is that Ivanthi Fernando’s life and work inspire me. Maybe one day, her two sons will write the poetry of their mother’s life and her struggle to perfectly align meaning in their lives.
We must wait.
Other articles in this series:
Let's help Jagana Krishnakumar rebuild our ancestral home
Do you have a friend in Pennsylvania (or anywhere?)
A gateway to illumination in West Virginia
Through strange fissures into magical orchards
There's sea glass love few will see
Re-residencing Lakdasa Wikkramasinha
Poisoning poets and shredding books of verse
The responsible will not be broken
Ownership and tenuriality of the Wissahickon
Did you notice the 'tiny, tiny wayside flowers'?
Gifts, gifting and their rubbishing
Journalism inadvertently learned
Reflections on the young poetic heart
Wordaholic, trynasty and other portmanteaus
The 'Loku Aiya' of all 'Paththara Mallis'
Subverting the indecency of the mind
Character theft and the perennial question 'who am I?'
Saji Coomaraswamy and rewards that matter
Seeing, unseeing and seeing again
Alex Carey and the (small) matter of legacy
The insomnial dreams of Kapila Kumara Kalinga
The clothes we wear and the clothes that wear us (down)
Every mountain, every rock, is sacred
Manufacturing passivity and obedience
Sanjeew Lonliyes: rawness unplugged, unlimited
In praise of courage, determination and insanity
The relative values of life and death
Poetry and poets will not be buried
Reunion Peradeniya (1980-1990)
Sorrowing and delighting the world
Encounters with Liyanage Amarakeerthi
Letters that cut and heal the heart
A forgotten dawn song from Embilipitiya
The soft rain of neighbourliness
Reflections on waves and markings
Respond to insults in line with the Akkosa Sutra
The right time, the right person
The silent equivalent of a thousand words
Crazy cousins are besties for life
The lost lyrics of Premakeerthi de Alwis
Consolation prizes in competitions no one ever wins
Blackness, whiteness and black-whiteness
Inscriptions: stubborn and erasable
Deveni: a priceless one-word koan
Recovering run-on lines and lost punctuation
'Wetness' is not the preserve of the Dry Zone
On sweeping close to one's feet
Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California
To be an island like the Roberts...
Debts that can never be repaid in full
An island which no flood can overwhelm
A melody faint and yet not beyond hearing
Heart dances that cannot be choreographed
Remembering to forget and forgetting to remember
Authors are assassinated, readers are immortal
It is good to be conscious of nudities
Saturday slides in after Monday and Sunday somersaults into Friday
There's a one in a million and a one in ten
Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California
Hemantha Gunawardena's signature
Architectures of the demolished
The exotic lunacy of parting gifts
Who the heck do you think I am?
Those fascinating 'Chitra Katha'
So how are things in Sri Lanka?
The sweetest three-letter poem
Teams, team-thinking, team-spirit and leadership
The songs we could sing in lifeboats when we are shipwrecked
Jekhan Aruliah set a ball rolling in Jaffna
Awaiting arrivals unlike any other
Teachers and students sometimes reverse roles
Colombo, Colombo, Colombo and so forth
The slowest road to Kumarigama, Ampara
Some play music, others listen
Mind and hearts, loquacious and taciturn
I am at Jaga Food, where are you?
On separating the missing from the disappeared
And intangible republics will save the day (as they always have)
The circuitous logic of Tony Muller
Rohana Kalyanaratne, an unforgettable 'Loku Aiya'
Mowgli, the Greatest Archaeologist
Figures and disfigurement, rocks and roses
Sujith Rathnayake and incarcerations imposed and embraced
Some stories are written on the covers themselves
A poetic enclave in the Republic of Literature
Landcapes of gone-time and going-time
The best insurance against the loud and repeated lie
So what if the best flutes will not go to the best flautists?
There's dust and words awaiting us at crossroads and crosswords
A song of terraced paddy fields
Of ants, bridges and possibilities
From A through Aardvark to Zyzzyva
Words, their potency, appropriation and abuse
Who did not listen, who's not listening still?
If you remember Kobe, visit GOAT Mountain
The world is made for re-colouring
No 27, Dickman's Road, Colombo 5
Visual cartographers and cartography
Ithaca from a long ago and right now
Lessons written in invisible ink
The amazing quality of 'equal-kindness'
The interchangeability of light and darkness
Sisterhood: moments, just moments
Chess is my life and perhaps your too
Reflections on ownership and belonging
The integrity of Nadeesha Rajapaksha
Signatures in the seasons of love
To Maceo Martinet as he flies over rainbows
Fragrances that will not be bottled
Colours and textures of living heritage
Countries of the past, present and future
Books launched and not-yet-launched
The sunrise as viewed from sacred mountains
Isaiah 58: 12-16 and the true meaning of grace
The age of Frederick Algernon Trotteville
Live and tell the tale as you will
Between struggle and cooperation
Neruda, Sekara and literary dimensions
Paul Christopher's heart of many chambers
Calmness gracefully cascades in the Dumbara Hills
Serendipitous amber rules the world
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