Colombo Changes 9 – Walking to the SLBC

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Colombo, Lakmahal, SLBC

SLBC

I used to walk down to the SLBC in the early eighties for my programmes. The sleepiness of the streets round ‘Lakmahal’ had diminished with the construction of Duplication Road, but Colombo was still pretty much a quiet place. Though it was a longer route, I preferred to go down Queen’s Road, which in those days did not have the schools that have now made its upper reaches a mess, first Sujata Vidyalaya which Goobai Gunasekara started in emulation of the great days of the national schools her mother had presided over, later Wycherley when International Schools became the vogue.

On the right, after Duplication Road, and the built up areas that had once been the gardens of Maalyn Dias and his sister, Ira Fernando, were what we always knew as Bank Houses. They were ensconced behind bright red brick walls, which I think I have only penetrated once, for a wedding, if I am right in thinking that Ranmali Pathirana’s reception was held in one of those, her aunt’s husband then heading the Commercial Bank.

On the left were old mansions that were open to sight, including the grand edifice that had belonged to Sir Marcus Fernando. Fascinated as I was by the early electoral politics of Sri Lanka, I knew the name well. It was Sir Marcus who had lost to Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan in the first election in which Ceylonese took part, that for the Educated Ceylonese seat on the 1912 Legislative Council, constituted under the McCallum Reforms. Ramanathan had got a great preponderance of Sinhalese votes to win, and one reason advanced was the caste factor, the Goigama Sinhalese preferring a Vellala Tamil to a representative of the Karawas.

Bridging Connections – Poetry of Filial Piety

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A J Canagaratna, Bridging Connections, Dylan Thomas, Mahagama Sekera, P. Sathiyaseelan, Patrick Fernando, Poetry

Filial piety is not really a common theme in English poetry, and what I recall of it tends to include some dramatic twist, as with Dylan Thomas urging his father not to go quietly into the night. Perhaps because our family structures have lasted longer, perhaps because we wear our emotions more readily on our sleeves, the theme in a direct manifestation is more common amongst us.

Mahagama Sekera’s poem, translated by Mahinda Pathirana, expresses emotion openly, though with a slight reference to a fairly common theme in both Western and Eastern literature, the forgetting of basic roots in the pursuit of material goods. The images used to evoke the past are not unusual, given our widespread concern with education, but the details recorded add resonance to the efforts made.

Lakmahal, Colombo, Sri Lanka: 75 years of Social change and Political Flux

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British Council, British Department of Overseas Development Assistance, Colombo, Lakmahal, Orhan Pamuk, Richard de Zoysa, The Enigma of Arrival, V S Naipaul

Introduction at the launch at the British Council on 17 January 2012.

I am most grateful to the British Council and its Director and his staff for hosting this event, to coincide with the planned expansion of its plant, in fulfillment I hope of increasing and increasingly productive activity in Sri Lanka. I am thankful too to Rex Baker, who was an extraordinarily inspiring person for whom to work. Let me remember too today my many colleagues at the Council in those youthful days, John Keleher and Clive Taylor and Ranmali Pathirana in particular from our very eclectic unit, and Jean Bartlett and Savanthi Gurusinghe, who are not mentioned in this book, but who were the solid foundation of efficiency on which we all built.

But this book, and therefore what I say today, is not so much about people, but about place. I remember years ago reading Forster’s account of Mrs Wilcox and her devotion to Howard’s End, and thinking that he could not possibly endorse her view that people were much more important than places. Now, older and wiser, I realize that people are also a function of place, and indeed of time, and one needs to appreciate all those dimensions in order to understand how people and societies interact.

Lakmahal 8 – Opening Doors: Hope and Transition

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Anil Gamini Jayasuriya, Bentota Beach Hotel, Bentota Rest House, Colombo, Coral Gardens Hotel, Ena de Silva, Gordon Mayo, Hope Todd, JR Jayewardene, Lakmahal, Lanka Oberi, Palm Court, Subash Hotel, Tholagetty Ashram

Twenty years before I moved into the main downstairs guest room at Lakmahal, to occupy it on what seems now a permanent basis, it had done duty as a permanent bedroom for about three years. That is my only recollection of its function having changed in my childhood, though I am told that my parents occupied it when they were first married. Later, in the early eighties, the small guest room downstairs was occupied by one of my father’s nieces and one of the Tamil refugees, a girl guide of my mother’s, who had come to us during the 1983 riots.

She stayed with us for three years in the end, for her home in Mt Lavinia had been burned, and the flat her family moved into after staying in a camp for some months was too small for all of them. She left only when the family, which included three boys who had been amongst the brightest students at S Thomas’ during my brief stint there as Sub-Warden, moved to Australia. Radha had not wanted to go, claiming she could not bear to leave home, but she had to in the end, and is lost to us now, as they all are, so many sacrificed on the smoking altar of JR Jayewardene’s ambitions and the ruthless machinations of his henchmen. And along with them, a victim in another way, was the best and brightest of Lakmahal’s progeny, Lakshman, Bishop of Kurunagala, who worked himself to death in the aftermath of the riots, traveling to Jaffna despite his delicate heart, visiting camps, praying, writing, urging, until the final inevitable heart attack took him away when he was just fifty six.

Colombo Changes 8 – Media Work

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Colombo, Esmond Wickremesinghe, Lake House, Mervyn de Silva, Oscar Wilde, Richard de Zoysa, SLBC, Trinity College

In addition to my work at the University, I did a lot of media work, for various newspapers as well as the SLBC. In those days the media was entirely owned by government, or else strongly supportive of it, an inevitable situation I suppose when the opposition is identified with socialism. I used to wonder therefore why JR continued to cling onto Lake House, contrary to his commitment before the election to reverse the previous government’s nationalization.

That move one could understand, given the relentless animosity Lake House had displayed towards Mrs Bandaranaike’s government, but it was foolish. I have always believed that control of the media is quite useless, at least for the purposes of propaganda, because the vast majority of people do not believe what government owned media outlets say. They therefore become simply instruments of pandering to those in power and, in becoming effusive, they do not bother to be credible. That is why governments that seek to control the media to ensure the results they want at elections end up controlling the elections too.

Bridging Connections – The Many Forms of Love Poetry

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Bridging Connections, Gunadasa Amerasekera, Love Poems, Nuhman, OH BOY, Passion, Poetry, Richard de Zoysa, Unduvap had come

Love poetry takes many forms, and I thought it would be interesting to set against each other three very different examples of the expression of passion. The first is by Gunadasa Amerasekera, who was better known as a novelist, before his current prominence as a social critic. The poem here makes clear however his skill as a lyricist too – though those familiar with the original might feel, brilliant though Lakshmi de Silva’s translation seems to me, that translation can never capture such feelings.