The Aunt’s Stories: A Twitch of the Thread – Part 2

Tags

1971 insurrection, Buddhists, Catholics, Chilaw, Civil Rights Movement, Fr. Jude, government, JVP, Kurunegala, Palm Court, Uva Province

In retrospect the 1971 insurrection seems a relatively tame affair, though it was traumatic enough while it lasted. I was in fact in Kurunegala at the time, having gone there for my usual April break, more sentimental than usual because I knew that it would be the last holiday of that sort. I had, to my surprise, for I had only done the entrance exam as a sort of trial run, won an award to Oxford for the coming academic year. I could not see Palm Court surviving till I got back; though in fact it did, albeit in greatly truncated form. Only Marie was there when I got back. Her father had died while I was still en route to England in August that year, and his sister Lilian followed him six months later.

My stay that April had been longer than originally intended. The police station in Kurunegala was attacked on the first night, along with police stations all over the country. The struggle had been violent, I gathered later, having managed to sleep through it all though it had kept Marie and her father quaking all night. But the attack was finally repulsed and after that the town itself remained secure. However, there were enough pockets of JVP domination on the road to Colombo to keep it closed for over a week. An almost continuous curfew was imposed, and we only survived in fact on the food that Fr. Jude and my uncle and anyone else who had curfew passes was able to bring.

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Mirrored Images – 9

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Cheliyan, DERRICK DE SILVA, Legend, Manoj Ariyaratne, On a Rainy Day, poems, Poetry, S Pathmanathan, Siri Gunasinghe, The Poet’s Lament

SIRI GUNASINGHE

The Poet’s Lament

 

There is no use

Sitting alone in the darkness

And crying and sobbing

Your crying cannot be heard

Your tears will not be seen

 

You try to give life to a dead bird

But you are not Brahma, the lord of life

You are not the only one who tried to shake the earth

With tightened throat and breath held back

Till your lungs almost burst

 

You are one grain of sand on the beach

Just one drop of water from a hidden ever flowing spring

Like you hundreds and thousands

Have wailed around a corpse

Valmiki did so, and Kalidasa

 

You can try to teach us to soar in the blue skies

But we remain still sunk on earth.

You can try to bring us the sun and the moon and the stars

But we still seek only the garbage around us

 

Fallen to earth with a thud, shot down with feathers broken

 

His eyes closed over the corpse

Man goes back and forth

And the words that once spread sweetness

Like damp stale smelling flowers

Now rot and stink

 

Words once had eyes and ears

And breath went up and down

And we can see the old sparkling face, worn out as it is

They laughed and sang

And have now fallen and faded away

 

There is no use

Crying and sobbing

Sitting alone in the darkness…

 

Translated by Manoj Ariyaratne

The Aunt’s Stories: A Twitch of the Thread – Part 1

Tags

1971 JVP insurrection, Bishop of Kurunagala, Boys’ Club, Catholic church, Fr. Jude, Fr. Matthew, Kurunegala, Moonemalle Inheritance, Palm Court

My aunt Marie was a Catholic on her mother’s side and, though she was not especially ostentatious about this, it was clearly a vital aspect of her life. I remember once, when I was young and staying with her and her father at Palm Court, she was delighted when I said that I preferred to go to the Catholic church with her for Christmas. It was a time when I was trying to assert my independence, but did not feel quite bold enough to miss going to church altogether on days of obligation.

My uncle the Bishop was disappointed. He remarked when he came to lunch that day, in the tones of mock heartiness I had begun to realize meant he was serious, that he had not seen me in his church.

‘He came with me,’ Marie answered quickly, before I could say anything. ‘I took him to midnight mass last night. It was packed, but he enjoyed it, even the smells.’

She had warned me about these before, in explaining that her church attracted a vast range of people, some of whom would not be as hygienic as our own class. Some pride about this however came through in her tone of indulgence. I think that in a way this signified to her the universality of her church, as opposed to the essentially middle class character of the Anglicans.

Mirrored Images – 8

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AAZHIYAAL, Angela de Silva, Fremantle Beach, Lakshmi Holmstrom, Lepidoptera, poems, Poetry, Signals from the Navel, Sunil Govinnage

SUNIL GOVINNAGE

Fremantle Beach

 

As the sun dives

into the mute Indian Ocean

across the western edge a dim rainbow fades

into a blue sky

turning rusty red

 

Sea waves carry their ivory froth to shore

another faded love

melting into memory

 

The evening breeze

 

whispers your sweet lullaby over the ocean

 

My heart aches

No song can stop those waves

Translated by the poet

The Aunt’s Stories: When The Lamp Was Shattered – Part 4

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Colombo, Hugh Moonemalle Goonewardene, Kurunegala, Palm Court

After that I looked on Marie’s lonely years at Palm Court with even greater awe. As time passed the loneliness had increased. For some years after Hugh’s death staff from the estates had continued to work at the house; but with land reform the estates had become smaller, and the rest of the family sold their sections off, and the pool of labour available to her became smaller. Still, in 1975, when I stayed for a few days during my visit home, her situation was reasonably satisfactory. Siya, who had come in for years to milk the cow in the mornings, now spent most of the day there even though there was no cow any longer. His wife came in to cook lunch and help with dinner, and there were even a couple of nephews to do any heavy work.

Feudal fidelity I though at the time, with a sort of satisfaction. But I was wrong. A year later I heard that Marie had found him stealing paddy from the store, and the parting had been acrimonious. After that hardly anyone from the estates came in to help her. Siya it seemed had said that she would never manage, and would have to leave Kurunegala in helplessness.

Mirrored Images – 7

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Alfreda de Silva, Avvai, Buddhadasa Galappathy, Lakshmi Holmstrom, Lines for Richard, Malini Govinnage, Richard de Zoysa, The Return, The Stealing of a Jeweled Lamp

BUDDHADASA GALAPPATHY

 

The Stealing of a Jeweled Lamp

 

Comrades, I need an answer

As to why you killed my husband

When he broke your law, the Law of Darkness

When you forbade the lighting of lamps

 

To make your point

He is not guilty

He obeyed your law

It was me

Who made him break it

 

For the offence

Of lighting a lamp

You have put out the lamp

That brought light to my household

 

It was not he who wanted it lit

But I, to quieten my little son

Who feared the darkness

 

I

Asked him to light the lamp

 

Where is your justice?

Why could you not find out

The reason he broke your law

Before you put out the lamp of my life?

 

Translated by Malini Govinnage

The Aunt’s Stories: When The Lamp Was Shattered – Part 3

Tags

Hugh Moonemalle Goonewardene, Olga Kelly, Palm Court, The Laughing Cavalier

By the time I went away, in 1971, holidays at Palm Court though no less enjoyable, had become increasingly Spartan. Hugh and Marie had no staff in residence at all, except for Marie’s old ayah, and she was spending more and more time away as the demands on her grew greater. Lilian however, surprisingly, still managed to have two women staying in, though one of them was mad, she claimed in a hushed whisper, and frighteningly so when the moon was full. This was in addition to Olga Kelly, who mellowing with the years had continued to survive the rigours of Palm Court, including the mad woman chasing her out of the kitchen with a broom.

A few months after I had left for Oxford, Hugh died. Lilian followed less than six months later, almost as though, blind but tenacious, she had especially hung on to outlive her much younger brother. Her section of the house was closed up, to be opened for cleaning at increasingly rare intervals. Roots began to thrust themselves through the walls, and the time came when one had to gather up courage to go in there, in case snakes were slithering around.

Mirrored Images – 6

Tags

ASWAGOSH, Daily News, Darkness, Dirge for Corporal Premaratne, Lakshmi de Silva, Mankulam, Militarism, Oppression, S Pathmanathan, SURESH CANAGARAJAH, To a Friend, Tyranny, Wimal Dissanayake

WIMAL DISSANAYAKE

To a Friend

The flames of war flare to the sky

Earth’s quarters shrill with famine loud

Rivers and streams, tear-filled, run high –

You lie lulled in your bed of clouds.

Armed fear and doubt in men’s hearts scream

Tempests hurl down peaks that rose proud:

The mob-mass volcanoes erupt

Pouring out molten lava streams

You lie lulled in your bed of clouds.

From every eye hot anguish streams

The shaken earth cries out aloud

From each side Death’s black banners gleam

You lie lulled in your bed of clouds.

Eyes widened a moment, you glance from the sky

Else, distant as the moon, you wait.

Has pity in your heart run dry –

– Or do you foresee your fate?

Translated by Lakshmi de Silva

The Aunt’s Stories: When The Lamp Was Shattered – Part 2

Tags

Colombo, Galle, Hugh Moonemalle Goonewardene, Humber Hawk, Kurunegala, Palm Court

Unlike her two older sisters my grandmother had married when she was just eighteen. Sometimes I wonder whether, though she remained convinced all her life that hers had been a great romance, she had not accepted the first person proposed to her because she could see the fate of her older brothers and sisters, all six of them still unmarried. Certainly there had been some sort of an arrangement involved. Her father as a youth in Galle had known my grandfather’s mother. Family tradition had it that he had wanted to marry her but been too poor, and she had married someone else while he went off to seek his fortune. It was quite likely that, forty years later, the thwarted couple would have thought it a good idea to bring the most eligible of their children together.

My grandmother had four children and, though one died unmarried in his thirties, just after we got back from Canada, and another became a priest and never married either, there were eight in the generation that followed. So there was destined to be some lasting use at least for all that old Hector with his tremendous energy had acquired. Yet none of these descendants bore his name. A hundred years after his first child was born, there was only Marie who did that; and by then the Bishop had died and Palm Court had been sold and even Marie was about to move to Colombo. When she did, our connection with the town ended.

Mirrored Images – 5

Tags

Frozen State, Ki.Pi. Aravinthan, poems, Poetry, Rex Baker, Sarath Amunugama, The Last Poem, Too Old For Tears

SARATH AMUNUGAMA
The Last Poem

 

Selecting the words

one by one

like bullets

aiming the argument

with that sardonic smile

in the corner of my mouth

in a moment, I fire the shot

bursting your heart into two

 

You, wordless

with your eyes wide

as soon as

the shot hits you

turned aside suddenly

to hide your tears;

fell on the bed

and began to sob

turning your heart’s blood

into tears

 

My heart leaps

like a hunter who

got his kill.

 

Your heart

broken into fragments

with my sharp logic

doesn’t utter a word

lying on the bed

hiding your head in the pillow

you only make veiled sobs.

 

But

having vanquished you

breaking you into fragments

using the power of

my logic

when your eyes

suddenly opened

why does that sight

reverberate in the heart?

Having murdered you

with my logic’s weapon

why is it that

a graveyard’s loneliness

pervades the heart?

 

Translated by A T Dharmapriya