Anuruddha Karnasuriya’s sloth

Sunimal De Silva was my Grade 6 class teacher. That’s 50 years ago. It was a bad year for me in terms of studies, but then again one of many. Sunimal Sir, as we called him, taught at Royal for decades and was iconic in his own way.

While in school, I always greeted him if I saw him and we exchanged pleasantries. I met him once in a bus. That was in the year 2000. That conversation indicated to me that he kept himself informed about the world around him. I also met him during a pilgrimage to India. But the ‘iconic moment’ happened in Sri Lanka. At the Royal College pool.

My sister-in-law suggested that we take our two daughters to ‘a coach who is like a kiri-aththaa (grandpa),’ so my wife and I went looking for him. He found us. It was Sunimal Sir. Kind, generous and good humoured as usual, he blurted out (in Sinhala), ‘they must be your daughters….I will coach them.’

Then he asked, ‘is this your wife?’ I affirmed and he said (in Sinhala): ‘of all the students I have taught, he is the one who did nothing with his abilities!’ I laughed and said, ‘sir, aathma thrupthiya neveida vadagath (is it not contentment that counts)?’ He became serious and said, ‘that’s true.’

Maybe it was just sloth that I was clothing in philosophy. But today, reading a poem I found consolation: Anuruddha Karnasuriya is way more slothful!


‘E handa methana (That moon, here)’ is the title of his maiden collection of poems (43 of them), published by Sarasavi. More than twenty years ago, he came out with ‘Sikuraadaavaka kathaavak (A story of a Friday),’ which I found to be a compelling read. A non-practicing lawyer and a senior lecturer political scientist at the Jayawardenapura University, I first met him sometime in 1993. He was just out of school. We belonged to a political group that later came to be known as ‘Janatha Mithuro.’ He entered the University of Peradeniya a few years later and was a prominent student activist.

He passed his law exams but never practiced. He opted for an academic career. We became close friends over the years not only because of general ideological agreement. The conversations on politics, international affairs, constitutional matters etc., were stimulating, but the more interesting exchanges were over literature, arts and philosophy. And love.

He wrote a few books. Too few. Excellently written and hopefully read with attention, I wouldn’t know. Off and on he would send me a verse or post something on Facebook. Each time I chided him for writing so little and so infrequently. The man not only has things to say but has the ability to communicate more effectively than those who have a far greater ‘literary’ and academic presence in social media and elsewhere.

Anuruddha never fails to point out when I err in my Sinhalese. My standard retort is that he didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘kuseetha (sloth).’ He didn’t know the word but he epitomised it. When one has acquired certain skills, it is good to use them. We can’t hold anyone to it, but then again, beneficiaries of free education owe a debt and people with intellect and words can pay simply by expressing themselves. He doesn’t do it enough. He’s just too lazy. He should have completed his PhD but hasn’t. Neither did I, but then again I opted out of academics altogether.

Anuruddha owes his writing/thinking skills to his father, who, being a leftist, would bring home the ‘Aththa (Truth),' the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Sri Lanka (Moscow). His task: copy the editorial (mostly written by the legendary and inimitable B A Siriwardena) and re-draw Yunoos’ cartoon. I don't know whether Anuruddha delved into drawing or painting, but he acquired a political language that was sharp and could be elegantly acerbic when required. He would have made an excellent lawyer.

I remember many conversations and that indicates how remarkable his insights have been. That’s another article. Or maybe a book. Maybe they’ve already made it into the book that’s going to be launched on the 9th of September. He does stuff like that. For example, he ‘stole’ an exchange between my wife and I (before we got married) that I had recounted, inserting it in one of his short stories.

But enough. That’s the word. Enough. He just hasn’t written enough and when I wish him a long life, it is in the hope that the years alone would allow a reading public access to what he has to say. I don’t believe his frequency would change. He was, is and will probably remain slothful. He might ask ‘Is not contentment that counts?’ I would have to say ‘that’s true.’

But enough. The following is a quick translation of a poem in his forthcoming book. It is titled, ‘Nopamaava danvanna (Inform without delay)':


Is there a tavern
of a different kind
somewhere nearby
so I can with love
become intoxicated

Thereafter can I not
scream and inquire
why no space has been
so far allocated
to bury love’s secrets
vast cemeteries
though there are!!

Carrying secret-clumps
as heavy as Mount Meru
in my mind
can I walk any further?

Be there such a cemetery
please inform me
without delay

I need
to be drunk beyond belief
and upon that earth 

senselessly sleep
and to the warmth of those dreams
awake

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Of things ‘closest to the heart’

 

Around twenty years ago a famous artist, now deceased, spoke with a fan over the phone. In my presence. In fact he used my phone to call her; so I wasn’t exactly eavesdropping.  I could only hear what he said.

‘Hello darling.’

‘Of course I remember your number. People my age only remember that which is closest to the heart.’

And he went on. For the record:

‘So when can we meet?’

‘Wednesday? Wednesday is a good day for romance.’

It is not hard to figure out what the other person said.  What stayed with me, though, is the observation about memory and proximity to the heart.  

A few years ago, a few months before she passed away at the age of 92, I was privileged to meet one Margaret Samararatne Nona Silva, the mother of a classmate, Priyankara. She was in the non-academic staff of Royal Junior School and everyone knew her as Margaret Anti (the Lankanized form of ‘Aunty’). We knew her as the lady who sorted things out if a boy in Grade One or Two wet his pants. Or worse.

She had lost her sight. She was hard of hearing. Her memory was sketchy. She couldn’t see us, i.e. her son, myself and a couple of others from our batch. She probably couldn’t hear us either. Priyankara said, in a loud voice obviously, ‘Amme, me Royal eke mage yaaluwo vagayak (Mother, these are some of my friends from Royal College).’

She raised her head immediately. She found her voice. She found passion. She said, ‘Raajakeeya vidyaalaya. Mama avurudu visi pahak hitiyaa!’ (Royal College. I was there for 25 years). Then she said, ‘thunuruwangema pihitayai’ (May you be blessed by the Noble Triple Gem).

A few weeks ago, my wife, a former student of St Joseph’s Convent (now ‘Balika’), recently showed a video of an old retired teacher: ‘Miss Charlotte.’ She is in her 90s and is apparently suffering from the typical issues related to cognitive ability and recollection. Someone had played the school song. Apparently Miss Charlotte had written the words. I am not sure who put music to the lyrics. It was a simple but moving video. The old lady sang along.

My artist friend, at the time, was not suffering from any of the infirmities mentioned above. He was being clever, I think. Flirtatious. It amused me. Indeed it amused him as well. We both laughed.

But he was right about ‘things closest to the heart,’ I now feel. At least that’s what the two examples mentioned above made me conclude.  

Things closest are things that have never left us or things we don’t allow to go away. Things we caress with tenderness or, indeed, things we grip on account of intense antipathy. Hatred, like love, is not easily discarded.  

There’s a Beatles song that comes to mind, ‘In my life.’

There are places I remember,
All my life, though some have changed,
Some forever, not for better,
Some have gone and some remain.

What remained for the Beatles as far as the lyricists, John Lennon and Paul McCartney were concerned, doesn’t have to be what stayed and stays for anyone else. They said, ‘…of all these friends and lovers, there is no one compares with you.’

Lennon was shot dead almost fifty years ago. I don’t know what McCartnes, now 83, remembers or rather holds on to now. It is reasonable to assume that it’s probably something close(st) to the heart.  

Is that what keeps the heart beating, I wonder. Is that what enables some kind of connection to life around us and life itself?

More than 25 years ago, my friend Anuruddha Karnasuriya, while traveling with me from Colombo to Kegalle, spoke about the last days of his mother, who had died of cancer a few years before. He said that she had lost consciousness, but she had balled her palm in the manner of a mother mixing rice for a child, and then stretched it out as though she was feeding one of her children. That to his was the saddest moment. He cried as he related the story. I did too.

My grandmother, even when she was over 90 years old, and would repeat herself over and over again, remembered a song she sang for a friend, someone around her age, when she was still a teenager. I would tease her about this ‘crush.’ She would blush and smile as she always did, all heart and nothing else, and say ‘aney, no…he was a very nice gentleman.’

‘So why didn’t anything come of it?’ I asked.

‘How could I? My father married me off to your grandfather!’

She laughed when she said this. She was over 90 years old. She never forgot the lyrics. She sang the song. And told the back story as well.  

I feel that if I live to be 90, if I succumb to dementia or Alzheimer’s, I will remember my grandmother, Kisa Gothami Herat, the elegant lady who I called ‘Amma’ simply because in my early years that’s what all the adults in that household including my mother, father and even my grandfather called her.

It’s hard to predict such things, but she is, most certainly among those who are closest to the heart or have been so for the longest time I can remember.  

[This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday']

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