Travels with Ena: Yala and other travels – Part 9

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Anjalendran, Cinnamon Estate, Delhi Cultural Mart, Ena de Silva, Geoffrey Bawa, George Fernandes, Herbert Malinga Guneratne, Hong Kong, India, Jai Jatley, Mandu, Miles Young, Sabaragamuwa, Ujjain

On two occasions I travelled with Ena in other countries. The first time was in India, when she was running a workshop for Jai Jatley’s Arts Organization. Jai Jatley was a power in the arts in Delhi, even during periods of Congress Party rule though she was closely associated with George Fernandes, one of Indira Gandhi’s strongest opponents and Minister of Defence in the last BJP government.

Jai had asked Ena and her cooperative to be the visiting artists at the Delhi Cultural Mart one Christmas, and the two dynamic old ladies had got on incredibly well. Notwithstanding that Ena was well over 80 by then, Jai invited her to bring some of her girls and boys over to do a batik workshop for Muslim textile workers in Ujjain, and accordingly Ena and half a dozen of her brood went there in the March of 2006.

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Travels With Ena: 1983 and its Impact – Part 2

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Aluwihare, Aluwihare Heritage Centre, Anjalendran, Batik, D B Wijetunge, Ena de Silva, Geoffrey Bawa, J R Jayewardene, Premadasa, Ruhuna University, UNP

Ossie died shortly after Sir Richard. Ena was devastated, and needed to get away. Friends, notably Tilak Gooneratne she would later say, who had also married into a Civil Service family, arranged for a Commonwealth Consultancy and she worked for a year and a half in the British Virgin Islands. Geoffrey Bawa, the architect who had developed a remarkable collaboration with her after he had designed a house for her in Colombo, had rented that house as an office for the many projects he undertook for the new government of J R Jayewardene, most memorably the new Parliament but also Ruhuna University.

When Ena came back, she retired to Aluwihare. She had set up there a Batik workshop, one amongst many that fed the flourishing business of Ena de Silva fabrics. When she went away to the Virgin Islands, she had handed the firm over to a nephew of her husband, but he had run it into the ground. She was unable to resurrect it, caught as it was in the throes of a messy divorce between her nephew and his wife, but she decided to do what she could for the Aluwihare Centre, which had provided gainful employment over the years to the villagers, including several relations.

Travelling with Ena is an especially enriching experience

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Aluvihare Heritage Centre, Anjalendran, Barbara Sansoni, Channa Daswatte, Ena de Silva, Geoffrey Bawa, Moonemalle Inheritance, travel

Introductory Remarks by Channa Daswatte
At the launch at the Indian Cultural Centre on 23rd April 2013 of
The Moonemalle Inheritance by Rajiva Wijesinha

I am privileged to have been asked by Dr. Rajiva Wijesinha to speak at the launch of his new book, which is his tribute to Ena de Silva in her 90th year, but indeed regret my inability to be here in person. Since part of the book is about travels, and the bug is indeed in me too, Rajiva has been kind in letting me be absent for this, as I travel at this very moment through Iran.

Travel is indeed a wonderful equalizer and opportunity for sharing. This is amply evident in the second part of the present volume. And indeed traveling with Ena is an especially enriching experience. The wonderful way in which Ena always manages to bring great food and service in the middle of the jungle while watching elephants swim across swollen torrents is fascinating. This is indeed in the true spirit of Ena de Silva, who on a trip to Sikkim eight years ago, with my parents, Chamikade Alwis (who will kindly read this in my absence) and myself, insisted on riding a yak at 17,000 feet on the border with Tibet! Ena was never going to miss out on any part of the fun of a journey. Traveling with Ena, as Dr. Wijesinha points out, also lends an opportunity to imbibe her vast knowledge and clear opinions about all things. But more than anything, her endlessly curious mind constantly engaged us with questions about her surrounding environment. I for one was glad that I had a pictorial handbook of Himalayan flora and fauna at hand to sate that curiosity.