Bridging Connections – Poetry relating to conflict

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Bridging Connections, Kamala Wijeratne, Karunakaran, Parakrama Kodituwakku, Poetry

After the oblique references to conflict in poems about the full moon, I thought I would deal direct with conflict this week. The first poem, by Parakrama Kodituwakku, was one of the most remarkable works of art associated with the first insurrection of 1971. I still recall reading it for the first time, in an Anthology of Sri Lankan writing produced by Ranjini Obeysekere and Chitra Fernando soon after I began teaching at Peradeniya. I believe it was the first book I was asked to review, and I think I made special mention of this poem.

The stereotyping by authorities of radical youth, if not subtle, makes clear the dichotomy between traditional expectations and modern aspirations. The translation by Ranjini Obeysekere captures in each stanza the different ways in which authority looks at the unorthodox. The last stanza, with its blend of diffidence and defiance, suggests the dilemma of the new generation; it illustrates too the long intellectual tradition of which the young rebels felt themselves the latest incarnation.

Post-Colonial Perspectives 1 – Beginning at the British Council

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British Council, Post-Colonial Perspectives

Early in 1984 I began working for the British Council. Zem Sally had asked me if I would take her position, and indicated that the then British Council Representative, Vere Atkinson, had thought this a good idea. I was sorry that Zem was giving up a position in which she had done so much, but it transpired that she had only moved there until the post of Council Librarian became vacant. She had been second in seniority, but had not got on too well with the incumbent, the first Sri Lankan to be appointed to the position. Vere, who had a high regard for her, had suggested then that she take up the newly created post of Public Relations Officer, to set the ball rolling as he hoped for enhanced cultural activity in the new hall that had been constructed when the Council moved to its new premises at Alfred House Road. It had always been understood however that she would revert to the position of Librarian when it became vacant.

British Council Building – Colombo – Sri Lanka – 1989

That time had now come, and she indicated that we could continue to work together as previously, with additional support from the Library for cultural activities. I was also touched that Vere wanted me, because he had had to put up with complaints over the launch of the Review. I had included ‘Slippery Pantaloons’ in it, my account of what had happened at S. Thomas’, and it seemed that Duleep or one of his supporters had protested. Vere had sent me a letter saying that he did not think the Thomian article should have been included, but that done he made it clear that it was business as usual.

Colombo Changes 15 – Old Masters

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Colombo, Keith Modder, Lyn Illangakoon, Rev L G B Fernando, Richard de Zoysa, Russel Bartholomeusz, S. Thomas’

S. Thomas’ was an extraordinary business, a bit like a roller-coaster ride. Everything went astonishingly well at first. It was astonishing, because it was all so simple. The school basically needed discipline, and it proved surprisingly easy to enforce this. The masters whom I remembered fondly as dedicated teachers were pleased, because their work was rewarded, and they did not have to put up with a few of their peers endlessly missing classes and destroying the routine of class and the primacy of work.

More importantly too the boys were generally happy. I did worry sometimes about whether I was being too hard, but I was reassured on this point by one of my old friends from the Drama Society, whom I met on one of the few occasions I permitted myself to go to the Art Centre Club. He told me that the boys felt that at last they had someone who cared.

Bridging Connections – Poems dealing with the full moon

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Arjuna Parakrama, Bridging Connections, full moon, Nandana Weerasinghe, Peradeniya Campus, Poetry, poya, S Pathmanathan

Given the importance of poya days in Sri Lanka, I thought I should bring together poems that deal with the subject of the full moon . They are very different in scope however. Fortunately, for they are long in themselves, I do not need to explain much: the themes are easy to grasp once one realizes the actual subject of the poems. The latter two are emphatically political, but I begin with the whimsy of Nandana Weerasinghe. I include two poems, since they are both short, though both are thought-provoking. The first is translated by Manoj Ariyaratne, the second by A T Dharmapriya.

Lakmahal 16 – Different Perspectives: Moving On

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1983, Bhutan, Cyril Mathew, Esmond Wickremesinghe, JR Jayewardene, Lakmahal, Lakshman Wickremesinghe

After the riots of July 1983, both my uncles were anxious to talk to me, at least according to my mother. I was not in Colombo when the troubles started, for I had a friend visiting from England and, after a hectic tour, to the ancient cities and Sinharaja and Lahugala and the east coast, we were relaxing at one of the cheaper Bentota hotels. When we heard the news, only at dinner time a full day after the troubles had started, I rang home, to be told that it was best to stay where we were, for the house was full of refugees. In any case there was a curfew in the WesternProvince, though we noticed on the next day that this did not prevent truckloads of obvious thugs crossing the bridge and heading towards Colombo to add to the mayhem.

We finally got home on Thursday the 28^th, and it was then that my mother said that Esmond had been to Lakmahal often over the last few days, to check obviously on his mother and the rest, but also it seemed keen to talk things over with me. However, Nicholas was clearly panicking, and looking after him while the house was packed seemed complicated, so the next morning we took a bus to Negombo, to wait there until he could get a flight back to England. On the way we realized that chaos was building up again, but it was only after calling home that evening that we realized the full extent of the horrors of Black Friday, when there was concerted killing.

Colombo Changes 14 – Seeking a role

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Colombo, Nawalapitiya, Peradeniya, Richard de Zoysa, S. Thomas’, Thomian Drama Society

Everything that could have gone wrong about our trip to Kandy in April 1981 did go wrong. We were due to travel by night, after an evening drinking at the Art Centre Club, but one of our number failed to turn up, so we had to postpone our departure till the next day. I did not want to go back home after having said I was leaving, so I spent the night at Richard’s, where his mother was quite used to sudden changes in plans. She was really quite an extraordinary character, remaining calm in the midst of all Richard’s various fads and fashions. On a couple of occasions I took her on holidays with us, which meant that Richard backed out, since he hated mixing up his different lives. However, characteristically, he dropped in on both occasions, even roaring up to Wilpattu on his bike for a lightening visit.

Bridging Connections – Poems dealing with animals

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Anne Ranasinghe, Ariyawansa Ranaweera, Bridging Connections, Poetry, S Pathmanathan

This week I will look at poems that deal with animals, but from an unusual perspective. All three poems deal with a sense of loss, that draws our minds to rather depressing aspects of, not human, but natural, conditions.

The first is perhaps the most familiar in terms of its subject matter, and indeed looks at conditions which man has created. It is by S. Pathmanathan, translated as usual by himself, and deals with a side effect of the destruction wrought by war. The scene should be an unfamiliar one, but it has been all too common in recent years in the North, and the writer brings to the experience, of coming back home after enforced exile, a touching mixture of bewilderment and the assumption that life simply has to just go on.

Lakmahal 15 – Different Perspectives: Coming Home

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Colombo, Esmond Wickremesinghe, Lakmahal, Lakshman Wickremesinghe

While I was growing up, I had little sense of Esmond, my mother’s eldest brother, being part of Lakmahal. The house emphatically belonged to the Wickremesinghes, with my grandmother presiding over it and her husband’s legacy with a commitment I took long to understand; whenever Esmond was present, he sat at the head of the table where his father had sat before him; but whereas Tissa, who died at Lakmahal in 1961, and Lakshman, who used it as his Colombo base, were emphatically part of the household, Esmond always seemed a visitor.

He had his own very comfortable home in 5^th Lane nearby, given to Nalini by her father when they married, and they were kind enough to keep my sister and me during the last days of Tissa’s illness when it was thought his agony would be too much for young children. 5^th Lane, as we called that household, always came to lunch on Sundays, though on an increasingly staggered basis as the years passed and its members developed different interests. Esmond himself was generally the first, and sometimes he had eaten and gone by the time the rest of his family, which was used to rising late, arrived. He himself often, if not always, also marked his presence in church on Sunday mornings, coming late and leaving early, after having checked that his mother had registered his arrival.

Colombo Changes 13 – On my own

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Alfie Moragoda, Clarrie Gunawardena, Esmond Wickremesinghe, J R Jayewardene, Jaffna Library, Lakshman Wickremesinghe, Ravi John, Richard de Zoysa, Romesh Soysa, Sarath Muttetuwegama, Tissa Jayatilleke

Thirty years ago then was a fallow period , as I came to terms with the realities of a rigid regime. The position I had hoped for at the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies vanished into thin air, and the editor of the ‘Sunday Times’ was compelled to stop my weekly literature column. All this was the more upsetting in that Colombo still assumed that all was well with the government and the country, and it must be one’s own fault if one was treated by the government as an enemy of the people, characterized by someone on the UNP Working Committee, as my uncle Esmond entertainingly described it, as a bearded Communist.

I was reminded then of the delightful Art Buchwald satire I had read many years ago of a country that received a lot of American aid, because it had a small Communist party. The aid had a beneficial effect and the country advanced into prosperity, with the Communists too benefiting. But when they gave up their old ideology, the Americans decided that aid was no longer necessary – so that the government had to beg them to keep the party going, to ensure further inflows of aid.

That story had a more preposterous incarnation in Sri Lanka two years later, when Jayewardene permitted appalling attacks on Tamils, and then claimed that this was the understandable response of the Sinhalese to efforts to divide the country. He therefore introduced legislation which in effect led to the elimination of the TULF from Parliament. That however proved too much for his Western allies, so before long the government reversed its stand and claimed that the attacks had been launched by  Communists. The old Stalinist Communist Party was proscribed, along with Vasudeva Nanayakkara’s Revolutionary Trostskyists and the JVP which Jayewardene had revived after he came into power.

Bridging Connections – Poetry of romantic passion

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Anar, Bridging Connections, Michelle Leembruggen, Poetry, Siri Gunasinghe, Vikram Seth

I make no apologies for getting back to romance, which is after all the very stuff of poetry. This week I will be dealing with passion, not sexual passion as on a previous occasion, but romantic passion.

The simplest account is by Michelle Leembruggen, whom I recall contacting me rather shyly to confess that she wrote poetry, and would I comment on some of her work. I knew her then as the glamorous actress who had contributed so much to English theatre, though by the time I returned she performed less frequently.

She had married Graham Hatch, and the two of them were seen as the senior members of the group of youngsters who had revived English Theatre in the seventies. They were a glamorous couple, and though by the eighties their marriage was breaking up, they got on well enough and continued to work together well. They appeared together in ‘Death Trap’ I think, where Michelle stole the show as the mad medium, even though she had to compete against both Graham and Richard de Zoysa. She was also marvelous opposite Richard as Evita, in a performance Graham directed, and I think I saw her last on stage as a heartwarming Griselda in ‘Cats’ – until, if my memory serves me correct, we managed to persuade her back to play Clytemnestra in Rudi Corens’ British Council garden production of the ‘Agamemnon’.