Thilina Kaluthotage's eyes keep watch ~ Malinda Words

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 215th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below]

There have been portraits that hang in empty halls. Frameless heads on nameless walls there must have been I’m sure. And eyes that watched the world and just could not forget. All these, long before the imagery was etched in the imagination by the lyrics and voice of Don McLean.

‘Starry, starry night,’ the song, is among my favourites. It has made me look closely at walls, portraits, ragged men in ragged clothes and eyes of all kinds too, those that see unseeing and those that watch the world. Intriguing always and yet I can’t think of any wall, portrait or eyes I’ve recently encountered that struck me deep inside as did a photograph by Thilina Kaluthotage.

He was apparently visiting parts of an old town submerged by the waters of the Moragahakanda Reservoir that had become visible due to the extended doubt. That album, posted on Facebook, is an incredibly poignant photo-essay. What lives were lived there, he makes us ask ourselves.

And so we imagine people, families, children, the day-to-day, what it must have been like, what alternative futures were submerged, the joys and sorrows of the new life somewhere else, regrets and perhaps a sense of having been robbed. You just can’t stop when archaeologies manifest themselves and stand as though in accusation: you knew and did nothing, you saw and looked away.

Of course it may not have been anything like that. And yet, there’s a portrait that the photographer had noticed and which he reframed, juxtaposing it with the present and what could be read as a distant future that had receded even further with the evaporating waters.

When was it painted? Who was the girl? Who was the artist? Where are they now? Or was it something painted after the waters retreated?

The eyes don’t look at the observer in accusation or disinterest. They look away, almost as though the girl has tired of answering question after question after question. There’s a figure by a window without glass or bars. Maybe it was art-directed, maybe that’s how it was when the photographer walked in and recognized immediately an intriguing composition.

It’s a story. An old tale of abandonment and exile, the work of the elements and the conspiracy of seasons that conjured ruins that cut through time and laid waste yet once again a valley that must have been home enough to be remembered as being more beautiful than the village it used to hold.

Simon Navagaththegama, in Sansaraaranyaye Dayayakkara, describes how the jungle and civilisation alternate, one yielding to the other only to be evicted and reoccupied by that which was usurped. Again and again.

And I ask myself: each time memory wanders to the lands, peoples and moments inundated, is it the same village that is obtained? Is it the same house, with the same window-frame, a wall doodled, a wall painted and a wall awaiting brush strokes, lines and spaces transformed? Are such things indelible or do they fade by distancing courtesy kilometres and years?

I ask myself: If reservoirs, submerged towns, relocated lives, drought and lost waters were all metaphors, isn’t Thilina Kaluthotage simply inviting us to peel back one year-lie after another and another and compelling us to face ourselves and determine whether or not we have the integrity to keep our eyes open just so we can comprehend and just so we can let the world know that certain things are unforgettable?

And I ask myself: What happened to a little girl, what happened to her parents, did she have brothers and sister, did she have a grandmother who told her stories, friends who turned backyards into playgrounds, did she have eyes and did she see, did she step out of a portrait and if so does she walk these desolate lands picking up broken pieces of life so she can with love put them altogether, re-create a community, place it on the virgin earth and make it fly with the softest command that is the slow closing of eyelids so it rises, rises and rises until it settles just above a full reservoir?

I ask myself: Thilina Kaluthotage, who gave you your eyes, in which nameless halls do your portraits hang and where are those nameless walls on which reside the frameless heads that know that which needs to be known and say nothing simply because all has already been said?

06 September 2023

Thilina Kaluthotage's eyes keep watch

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