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.