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.

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Travels With Ena: 1983 and its Impact – Part 6

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Colonel F C de Saram, Esmond Wickremesinghe, Gajan Pathmanathan, Old Place, Regi Siriwardena, Richard de Zoysa, Sidney de Zoysa, Tissa Jayatilleke, Wijayananda Dahanayake

I cannot recall if I visited Alu again that year. Since then I have kept diaries, albeit perfunctorily, of my daily life, but 1983 was the last year in which I was still careless about memories. I know that in August I went to England for nearly two months, and soon after I came back home my uncle Lakshman died, so we had to spend some time at Kurunagala sorting out his belongings in the Bishop’s House he had lived in for twenty years. We stayed at the Old Place, a shell now in comparison with its former grandeur, even unto the sixties when my grandmother’s brother Leo had been a leading citizen of the town. His daughter Lakshmi was to stagger on alone there from 1971, and for another four years after her cousin Lakshman died, with myself being her main if not her only visitor for brief periods in those last few years. Lakshman’s death was the last occasion on which the family, including my grandmother who had been born there in 1900, visited the place together.

Post-Colonial Perspectives 4 – A range of performances

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Alfreda de Silva, Amaradeva, Anne Ranasinghe, Colombo Symphony Orchestra, Earle de Fonseka, James Goonewardene, Jean Arasanayagam, Lakdasa Wikkramasinha, Patrick Fernando, Peace Samarasekera, Piyasara Shilpadhipathi, Prashanthi Navaratnam, Punyakante Wijenaike, Regi Siriwardena, Rex Baker, Trinity College, Yasmine Gooneratne

Colombo Symphony Orchestra

Before I got involved in education too, my work consisted of ensuring positive publicity for the work of the Council in general, while also promoting literature and art and film and music. I set myself a target of about half a dozen programmes a month in the Hall, together with something larger about once a quarter. Fortunately Rex was quite happy to let me work on Sri Lankan efforts too, so I generally managed to ensure a regular flow of activity.

This was made easier by the fact that London had a library of films, from which we could borrow one each month, for several screenings, in addition to a set for a festival each year. I had a judicious mix of culture and entertainment, old favourites

Trinity College Choir

and contemporary productions. Then there were lectures and readings, the occasional art exhibition, and a few concerts. We got down British musicians about twice a year, for performances in the Hall as well as in larger concerts outside, usually in collaboration with the Symphony Orchestra. I was also able to showcase local talent such as the Trinity College Choir, and Prashanthi Navaratnam, after her initial training in London.

Preshanthi Navaratnam

We developed an excellent collaboration with the Symphony Orchestra, chaired in those days by the redoubtable Peace Samarasekera and conducted almost always by Earle de Fonseka. He was utterly charming, and a highlight of all performances was the dinner he hosted at his house for the entire orchestra, plus anyone he thought had helped. We also did some work with local musicians, initially because a delightful man called Sivasambu ran what he called the Bloomsbury Group in London, which had an annual festival for which he asked the Council to sponsor an artist from Sri Lanka. We sent both Amaradeva and Piyasara Shilpadhipathi, on one occasion together. I knew the work of the former of course, but I was privileged to discover the latter’s excellence as a drummer.

Bridging Connections – Children’s poems dealing with social problems

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children, Regi Siriwardena, Siri Gunasinghe, Siththaanthan

The three poems about children that will be featured this week deal, each of them, with social problems that are of deep concern to the different communities in this country.

The poem written by Siththaanthan and translated by Thava Sajitharan deals understandably enough with the traumas of children in a conflict situation.

The details are telling, mothers using armed men as bogies to get their children to eat, the empty swings, the little boy looking at the cart he made that he cannot drive on the streets.

And then, after we have been lulled into thinking that it is just the situation that is being described, we have the shock of the child killed by the speeding truck, with the emptiness that follows.