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