Mirrored Images – 4

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Anar, Darkness and Terror, Emigrants, Gunadasa Amerasekera, Parvathi Arasanayagam, poems, Poetry, Ranjini Obeyesekere, Some More Notes on Blood, Thava Sajitharan

GUNADASA AMERASEKERA

Darkness and Terror

The shadow of the giant palm flickers through the rubber trees
The stream falls weeping by the bamboo clump
The visage of that darkness now smothering father’s grave- stone
Drifts towards me, terrifies me.

The shirt I hung to dry beside the well that’s near the grave
I forgot to bring it in this afternoon
Is it still out there, hanging by the well?
Go Brumpi, run and fetch it for me soon

Only this morning I bathed at that well by the shade of the
vatakeiya bush
But I can’t think now how it looked by the light of day.
The dark black dark, armed with quills from the kitul palm
Comes with the bamboo to swallow me.

The same blackness that blurred the stone by the well
Now creeps up on the porch
Stone-throwing poltergeist dark that blacked the road
It comes — here – by my hand!

I cannot stir. I dare not turn.
Only the dark, what else? But I fear it

Sister, little sister, go strike a match quick
Light the lamp in the living room.

Translated by Ranjini Obeyesekere

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Travels With Ena: Home Stays – Part 6

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Affiliated University College, AUC English programmes, Belihuloya, Beragala, David Gladstone, Days of Despair, Diyaluma, Diyatalawa, Ena de Silva, Harin Abeysekera, Horton Plains, JVP, Lakmahal, Military Academy, Nirmali Hettiarachchi, Rahangala, Sabaragamuwa University, Wellawaya

The campus at Sabaragamuwa was beautifully situated, on a plateau below Horton Plains. Sadly none of the houses the Japanese had built commanded any sort of a view, but the moment you stepped outside you had a glorious vista of hills to the north. The place was also ideally situated for drives, most memorably eastward towards Beragala, from where you could either go straight on past Diyaluma to Wellawaya and the East, or else turn upward to Haputale. I had much relished the latter drive when I coordinated the AUC English programmes at Belihuloya and Rahangala, just before Diyatalawa, and this was a pleasure I experienced again, once a week for seven years, after I took over coordination of the degree programme at the Military Academy at Diyatalawa.

Ena and some of the hard core spent one delightful New Year with me at Belihuloya, way back in 1994 when it was still an Affiliated University College. Shanthi had managed to convince her office that she had work to do in the area, and in fact she made Harin Abeysekera drive her up one day to Diyatalawa to some agricultural station. Priyani sensibly stayed behind, with their son, which meant they could come with Ena and me on a leisurely drive to Diyaluma and back. For the rest, we had a tranquil time, Priyani very tactfully taking her son away to play on the swings when he became restless.

Mirrored Images – 3

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Dirge for Your Village and Mine, Jean Arasanayagam, LIYANAGE AMARAKEERTHI, Mr. Amirthalingam, Nallur, Once upon a Foreign Country, P. AHILAN, Poetry

Once upon a Foreign Country

LIYANAGE AMARAKEERTHI

‘Broken, beautifully broken,’
I thought
on the day Karuna broke away from the Tigers
and I read it on the Net

I wanted to call my friends
and enjoy the news with them
all the Sinhalese who gather to eat rice together
and brag about building the nation

My defeated, guilty
arrogant Sinhala heart.

Broken
My two year old son’s sleep
was broken
by the clatter of the computer
on the day Karuna broke away

Piggy-backed as usual
while I read the Net
looking over my head
at Karuna’s face on the monitor
my son said ‘Thatha’

In fact Karuna does look like me
no need of more proof
my wife thinks so too

Another day
when having risen early
I read in the BBC
about the assassination of Kaushalyan
an Eastern tiger leader
my son was in my lap
still a bit sleepy

‘Thatha,’ he said
leaning against my heart
looking at Kaushalyan
on the page I was reading

I had to agree with my son
at least to an extent
I looked like Kaushalyan too

To my son’s eyes
still not blinded by culture
still not bound by ideology
all three of us look alike
with no mark of ethnicity
carved on our foreheads

At the instant my son gifted me
with the third eye of insight
I saw Karuna, Kaushalyan and myself as one

If I was born in the North or East
if I had to run in that bitter black July
barely evading torches, knives, swords
and the clubs of Sinhala thugs
in ragged clothes, bleeding all over
carrying little brothers and sisters

screaming
but still not awakening the peacefully sleeping
Sinhala political conscience

in Colombo, Galle, Kurunegala,
and sacred Anuradhapura
if I had to grow up
under the world-destroying Ishwara gaze of the Sun God
tied in the chains of ideology
which polish fear with blood
into public opinion
I may well have been copied into Karuna
and tamed into Kaushalyan

Auden said of Yeats
‘Mad Ireland hurt him into poetry’
and this mad island
has hurt us all into the heart of madness

Which idiot says
‘There is no problem for Tamils
just because they are Tamils’
in this great lie that is Dharmadeepa?

But when I read how Kadirgamar’s heart
the heart of a man left alone between Sinhala and Tamil
was pierced by a bullet
when he was cleansing himself of the filth
that got to him hanging around with politicians all day
my heart was defeated

I was alone
without my son over my head
or in my lap by my heart

He doesn’t like it anymore
to look at the computer which shows him
other forms of his father

perhaps knowing by instinct
that it hurts the heart he leans against

I am afraid again
that my conscience might fall asleep
that I hurt reading the Internet
when living in a foreign country

Should I tell my son of the death of Uncle Kadir?
Why should I give him my Lankan sorrow?
No. I will tell him something good
about Lanka, Sinhala and Tamil

Let him sleep happily
in a foreign country

Travels With Ena: Home Stays – Part 5

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Affiliated University Colleges, Aluvihare Heritage Centre, Aluwihare, British Council, British High Commissioner, British Overseas Development Administration, David Gladstone, Ena de Silva, English Language Training, GELT programme, Geoffrey Bawa, Neil Kemp, Samanalawewa Dam, University Grants Commission, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Vere Atkinson

I could never really reciprocate Ena’s hospitality by hosting her myself, but I did try in various ways on various occasions. The first was vicarious, in that I arranged an Exhibition for her at the British Council, and obtained the use of the former Representative’s house for not only the display but also as a place to stay for some of the vast brood she brought down.

The house had been built by Geoffrey Bawa near the entrance to the premises that he had constructed in 1982 by joining two old bank houses together. These colonial style buildings had been embellished by a colonnaded corridor, and looked splendid. The much lower two storied house on the other side had a matching façade, and the downstairs looked very elegant, but it was not an easy place in which to live. The Representative who had supervised the buildings, Vere Atkinson, loved it, but his successor, the boss I have most enjoyed working for, loathed the place. Vere said it was because he had a Swedish style wife who could not cope with a Bawa style house, but when I saw the poky upstairs, after they had left, I realized how difficult it must have been to survive there, with several children too.

Mirrored Images – 2

We are all happy
By Sajeewani Kasturiaracchi

Even before the dusk peeks in
I lock the gate with a huge padlock

The wall round my house, with barbed wire along its top
is many feet tall
no one can jump in
Then I close doors and windows
I am well-protected now.
No, there is no one to bomb me now
it is the best time to watch
war-news on TV
There you go!
Those are rescued people
in those wonderful camps
filled with all the riches
in fantastic camping huts
As long as they are there
they are safe, they say
So, we are all happy

Travels with Ena: Home Stays – Part 4

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A Way in the World, Affiliated University College, Anil’s Ghost, Anuradhapura, Australian High Commissioner, British Council, Commonwealth, David Woolger, Dileeni Raheem, Dodo Fernando, Ena de Silva, Ena de Silva Fabrics, GELT Centre, Gill Juleff, Herbert Keuneman, In the Skin of a Lion, Ismeth Raheem, Jeevan Thiagarajah, Many Voices, Michael Ondaatje, Nihal Fernando, Nirmali Hettiarachchi, Peter Rowe, Phyllis Ratwatte, Raji Ratwatte, Regi Siriwardena, Richard de Zoysa, Running in the Family, Scott Richards, Shanthi Wilson, Suren Ratwatte, The English Patient, The Enigma of Arrival, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, The Moor’s Last Sigh, Yala

In addition to writing and loafing, there was also much talking. In the early years there was usually some sort of a party there, one or other member of what we termed the Hard Core, the group of relations (which of course included Shanthi Wilson, her parents having been close to both Ena and Phyllis for decades) which went to Yala. As that generation, my sister and Raji and Suren Ratwatte, and those they wed in the course of the eighties, became too busy for more than the occasional trip, I found an older generation in attendance, to go with Ena to Yala and also spend time at Alu. Nihal and Dodo Fernando were the main figures early on, and later  Ismeth and Dileeni Raheem, all of them entertaining companions, full of fascinating information, not always the most useful.

I also took up several of my own friends, all my foreign guests whom I thought worthy of the honour, and the few local friends I thought Ena would find congenial. Ena’s favourite amongst them was Nirmali Hettiarachchi, who also took her family up on occasion, while Jeevan Thiagarajah also got on extremely well with Ena though I would have thought they did not have much in common. But, like Richard, his ancestors had been part of the circles Ena had moved in, and even more than Richard he had extremely good manners of an old fashioned sort, which Ena much appreciated. She did not however have any good words to say about Jeevans’s wife, and as usual her instincts proved correct, for some years later there was a most acrimonious parting.

Mirrored Images – Introduction

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Amarakeerthi Liyanage, Chelva Kanaganayakam, Days in the Trenches, Eric Illayaparacchi, Human Bomb, Indian Cultural Centre, Indian High Commissioner, Jean Arasanayagam, Lakshmi Holmstrom, Ministry of National Languages and Social Integration, National Book Trust of India, P. AHILAN, Peradeniya University, Poetry, Refugees – Old Man Old Woman, Sunday Observer

‘Mirrored Images’, a collection of English and Sinhala and Tamil poetry from Sri Lanka, was launched in Colombo on September 20th, and subsequently in Kandy on the 27th and in Jaffna on the 30th. The Colombo event was chaired by the Indian High Commissioner in Colombo, HE Yashwant Singh, with Vasudeva Nanayakkara, Minister of National Languages and Social Integration as Chief Guest. The even was arranged by the Indian Cultural Centre, in collaboration with the Alliance Francaise.

Both these institutions have collaborated on the launches in Kandy and in Jaffna. The former event was held at Peradeniya University and the latter at the Indian consulate. Poets featured in the book read at all the events, attendance in Colombo by readers from Jaffna, and vice versa, being sponsored by the Ministry of National Languages and Social Integration.

The volume was launched earlier in Canada by the Sri Lankan Mission in Toronto, with a keynote address by Prof Chelva Kanaganayakam, who has furnishe an introduction to the Tamil section of the book. Prof Chelvanayakam taught English previously at the University of Jaffna, while his father was Professor of Tamil at the University of Peradeniya. The introduction to the Sinhala section of the book was written by Prof Amarakeerthi Liyanage who teaches currently at the University of Peradeniya.

The book, which was edited by Prof Rajiva Wijesinha and published by the National Book Trust of India, is a sequel to ‘Bridging Connections’, a collection of English and Sinhala and Tamil short stories from Sri Lanka which was published in 2007 and has now been translated into Oriya and Marathi and Tamil.

Poems from each language on similar themes were brought together by Prof Wijesinha for a weekly column in the ‘Sunday Observer’, which was then features on this site. Over the next few months poems from each language, in alphabetical order of the names of the writers, as they appear in each section of the book, will be brought together here, to enhance understanding of the different styles and perspectives, and of the common humanity of all the writers.