Almost twelve years ago, I wrote, ‘Stamps do not carry the name and signature of artists.' It was a piece about three exceptional teachers, including one artist, Pulasthi Ediriweera, who had by then designed more than 150 stamps.
A kind reader, responding to the above contention, wrote, ‘True, but [they carry] the name of our country and “art and creativity” or the talents of our people that definitely [touch] the hearts of many around the globe and the hearts of beautiful kids who like to collect stamps as a hobby. These artists, to me, like to stamp their signature in the hearts of people.’
A few days ago Pulasthi posted a portrait of a fellow artist, a colleague and friend, Hemantha Gunawardena. It had been done on request when Hemantha retired as an art director of Phoenix O&M after serving the advertising agency for several decades. No charge. Typical of Pulasthi who has taught hundreds of aspiring artists for years without charging a cent.
This is about Hemantha, though. He didn’t teach. He didn’t design stamps. His work is not collected by kids all over the globe. He was, however, an accomplished creative artist, self-effacing like his friend Pulasthi, and yet someone who stamped his signature on people around him, especially his friends and colleagues at Phoenix.
Hemantha entered the advertising industry long before there was enabling software that made things easy for illustrators and art directors. What’s done now with a few deft movements with a fingertip and some clicks had to be hand-done, so to speak. Tedious. Slow. In comparison. He was not left behind because he didn’t want to be left behind. He kept abreast of technological enhancement, he stood his ground. So very softly. Those who worked with him would, I am sure, recount dozens of interventions that made a big difference to creative projects.
He was always a part of any collective celebration or animated discussion be it on work, art or politics. He would put in a word now and then, or raise a quiet question, but was never confrontational. He withstood storms beyond his strength in whatever form they came. He smiled. Made the worst of moments bearable.
In all the years I’ve been at Phoenix, working as a part-time copywriter (or, as lyricist and senior copywriter Vajira Mahakanumulla once said, as a ‘trainee translator’), there have been two people who loved Sinhala songs. One was Harith Gunawardena and the other was Hemantha. They had thousands of songs, they knew about the songs, the singers, the lyricists and the relevant nidhana katha. Dileepa Abeysekera, another exceptional creative mind, probably knows as much or more but he had left Phoenix by the time I got there.
Hemantha’s workstation was close to my nondescript desk. And that’s how I got to know he loved music. I still remember the song he played one morning, long before our colleagues trickled in; he had music-hours, mostly before work began formally or after work when only those who had urgent work to complete were around. Swarna Sri Bandara’s lyrics, Amaradeva’s voice: Daethe ellee (literally, clinging on to [my] hands).
It was a song about a father thinking about his daughter and how she, who as a child had delighted him with the sweetest observations, had been taken far away from him by the chariot wheels of time. I think this was before Hemantha became a father. I already had two daughters and they were too small at the time for me to be nostalgic about young fatherhood and little girls. I could extrapolate though. The song has stayed with me and made me treasure that much more every moment of my daughters' growing up years. I asked him to play it again. He did. And then he downloaded his entire collection of Amaradeva’s songs for me.
Hemantha would become father to three girls and it is fortuitous, all things considered that he didn’t live long enough for time to take those lovely girls far away from him. But he’s gone now. Far away. Signatures left behind will remain for a long time, though; he stamped his on our hearts so gently that it took this departure to notice it at all.
Hemanthaya. That’s a season. Harith didn’t miss the significance of the name. Yali noena hemanthaya, was the title of a short tribute he penned for our friend, a season that will not come around again. Not for those he touched with smile and song. A song, a smile and a season. That’s Hemantha Gunawardena.
['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 a new series. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below]
Other articles in this series:
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
