On shortlists and the Fairway Award

Books are celebrated. So are authors. Awards, however, rarely are. There are reasons for this, of course. Like the selectivity that goes into rewarding merit. Or the rubbishing of merit and the inflation of other dubious factors. Or the fact that, at least in the context of literary awards doled out by private establishments in Sri Lanka, there’s next to nothing that’s dished out in the name of recognising, affirming, and rewarding talent in the vernacular.

Not for nothing, after all, do writers, critics, and others concerned with our literary discourse lament the lowering of the bar when it comes to the Colombo literati. Now’s not the time to indulge in that, but suffice it to say that, as a friend of mine told me the other day, there’s enough and more in contemporary Sinhala and Tamil literature that dwarfs their English counterpart, whether in terms of output, subtlety, nuance, or sensitivity to culture.

That is why, when a major private establishment that sponsors arguably the largest gathering space for the aforementioned Colombo literati decides to recognise talent in both English and vernacular literature, there must be applause. And praise.

It all began about a year ago. Fairway Holdings, one of the leading companies driving growth in real estate in the country, had become the sponsor and de facto patron of the Galle Literary Festival. The Festival was launched in 2007, and eventually became the gathering space for the literary cosmopolitans it is today. It was by default organised as a symposium on literature. Something, however, was missing.

That something was an opportunity to reward our writers. Fairway must have doubtless realised this, because before the Festival was organised for 2016, it was decided that an award would be launched and given to create that opportunity.

And so applications were called. By the time Fairway announced the shortlist for each of the three language categories in December last year, quite a number of submissions had been received: 69 in Sinhala, five in Tamil, and 16 in English. Not surprisingly, the Festival held about two months later gained colour, memory, and of course a yearning for more when it “shortlisted the shortlist” and lavished accolades on final winners.

That was a year ago. Fairway decided to continue what it began. On the 30th of last month, after a great deal of cutting and chopping and weeding away the not-so-good, a panel of judges announced their shortlist for this year’s award. Together with critics, writers, journalists, and other concerned individuals, they all gathered at JAIC Hilton, where for more than an hour they reflected on the importance of writing with sincerity, as well as their hopes for the current literary discourse in the country.

The judges were unblemished enough. There was Dharmasena Pathiraja announcing the Sinhala language shortlist. He reflected on those experimenting with language, the effects of postmodernism on them, and how, with almost all the novels submitted this year, he and the rest of his panel (Krishantha Fredricks and Professor Piyaseeli Wijemanne) found it difficult to separate the author and the reader in terms of assessing their intrinsic worth. Pathiraja added that the themes that the Sinhala applicants had chosen this year – the urban/rural divide, the left/right political dichotomy, and the conflict in the North (and South) – amply reflected this.

He then raised an interesting question. Given the fact that a work of art must be reconciled to the ambition it sets for itself, what is the point of bringing up other factors that are at best extraneous? Interesting. Brings to mind what the inimitable Harold Bloom once observed: that aesthetic value (be it in literature or elsewhere) is autonomous or independent of moral and political content.

All in all, the Tamil and English judges opted for the same tone. Professor Sitralega Managuru spoke for the Tamil entries. Dr Vivimarie VanderPoorten spoke for the English entries. VanderPoorten in particular raised an interesting point. She argued, correctly I believe, that despite the fact that newcomers had indulged in experimenting with literary devices, they opted in the end for themes so hackneyed that they trivialised whatever they would otherwise have achieved in their work. I’m not sure, however, whether what she said there holds true for the English literati only.

There were others who spoke. Kavinda Dias-Abeysinghe, Deputy Chairman of Fairway Holdings, reflected on how the literature of a country eventually becomes its cultural signature and how, if we are to moor the present and future in the past, we shouldn’t let talent go unrecognised or unrewarded. He could have added that this doesn’t hide the fact that despite the one or two works of art that decorate the history of a culture, there would have been a great many others which, owing to mediocrity or sheer bad luck, pass away unnoticed. That’s not just tragic, it’s inevitable. In a context where merit appears to be sidelined in favour of other more dubious factors, therefore, the least we can hope is to preserve the best and praise the rest.

Given all these reflections, I believe I can say this with certainty: what Fairway has done in the name of recognising merit (with 100,000 rupees awarded to each shortlisted candidate and 500,000 rupees to each of the three winners) must be called for what it is: laudable.

We will be waiting, hence. And watching. For next year.

Written for: Ceylon Today LITE, September 11 2016

The Andrew Jayamanne we lost

Cameramen have a habit of yielding to the director. That’s natural. The director “reigns”, after all, and owing to that everyone or everything that comes under his purview must, as a matter of course, give way to what he wants.

There are of course times when this isn’t the case, when the agency of an editor, photographer, or even actor prevails over the ultimate auteur of a film so much that when we see it, we see those little, little details that could only have come from them. So no, the director isn’t always king, therefore. Not by a long shot.

Sri Lanka isn’t that different. On the other hand, compromise is the name of the game when it comes to the movies. One comes across collaborations between artistes, more particularly between filmmakers and editors or photographers, and one can, if discerning enough, argue that one phase of those filmmakers’ careers is different to the other on account of their choice of crew members. Few would contend, after all, that the films of Lester James Peries shot by the late Willie Blake are the same as those shot by Donald Karunaratne (compare Gamperaliya and Kaliyugaya and you will see why). Few would also contend, however, that the gap separating these two artistic sensibilities is unbridgeable.

The point is that it all depends on perspective. If you’re a filmmaker, you claim authorship. It you’re not, you don’t. And so Satyajit Ray claimed that Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons were one and the same owing to Orson Welles’ direction, despite the fact that he used different cinematographers for them. And so Gore Vidal, by the same logic, claimed that the two were different despite Welles BECAUSE of the different cameramen. Ray was a director, Vidal was not. The one was an auteur, the other was a collaborationist.

Andrew Jayamanne was a collaborationist. He was a cameraman. Crass, but that’s the best way one can describe him. He adapted to the director he worked under, even when that director altered his usual style and went for something different. He had his views on his craft, no doubt, but like all collaborationists he chose to privilege what the filmmaker wanted. He was there with some of our most revolutionary artistes, as they oversaw the second biggest wave in our cinema after Rekava.

Jayamanne would have been 72 had he lived. We lost him two years ago.

He was born in Periyamulle in Negombo in 1943. He came from a family of devout Catholics. Naturally, religion figured in his childhood. Educated initially at St Anthony’s College in Dalupotha, young Jayamanne was later moved to St Aloysius Seminary in Colombo, where he studied to become a priest. He abandoned that vocation on doctor’s orders, and opted for a more hands-down profession. That profession coalesced into his first love, photography, one he had indulged in while at school. Eventually he was employed at the Kotahena Radio and Electronics Laboratory.

He was not quite 20 when he joined Vijaya Studios in Hendala. There he met Titus Thotawatte, who had by then decided to move into his own career. In 1970 the two of them got together for Haralakshaya, which marked both their debuts. Haralakshaya was a box-office hit and established Thotawatte as a weaver of stories, who could transform real life into fiction and win dividends at the ticket booth. As for Jayamanne, his fate too was sealed, and for the next few years, the two of them collaborated over some of the more middle-of-the-road landmarks in our cinema: Atheethayen Kathawak, Sihasuna, Mangala, Sagarika, Maruwa samaga Wasaya, and of course that perennial classic, Handaya.

Handaya came out in 1979. That same year, Vasantha Obeyesekere scripted Palagetiyo. In keeping with his earlier films, he went for an anti-romantic and naturalistic style far removed from the conventional cinema of the time. As far removed from Thotawatte’s universe as it could be, there could have been no film more different to the kind that Jayamanne had shot. But Obeyesekere chose him and, for his most imaginative film until then, Jayamanne managed to shoot and bring out the clash of class conflict and love which congeals into tragedy in the end.

Palagetiyo marked the only time the two of them worked together. Owing to his success in it no doubt, he was chosen by Dharmasiri Bandaranayake (who had acted as Sarath, the hapless protagonist, in Obeyesekere’s film) for his own debut, Hansa Vilak. That debut brought out Jayamanne’s dexterity: while Palagetiyo had been rooted in a simple, naturalistic style reminiscent of the post-war American and European cinema, Hansa Vilak was relatively flamboyant. I remember Bandaranayake telling me after the late Henry Jayasena that it shared affinities with the films of Ingmar Bergman. What he meant, of course, was that the clash between fantasy and reality represented in the story was so strong that it was hard at times to distinguish between the two, something which Premasiri Khemadasa’s score and (without a doubt) Andrew Jayamanne’s dreamy photography added to.

Jayamanne shot two more films for Bandaranayake, Thunveni Yamaya (his most underrated and most dreamy) and Suddilage Kathawa (which was more rooted). In the meantime he worked with other visionaries, ranging from the middle of the road H. D. Premaratne (for four of his later films, including Mangala Thagga and Visidela) to the underrated Parakrama Niriella (Siri Medura). He adapted and adopted, gave in to the vision of the director, asked no questions, and helped us understand the cinema from the standpoint of everyone involved in it.

There’s no doubt, after all, that Suddilage Kathawa is miles away from Sumitra Peries’ Sagara Jalaya, the only commonality between them being the fact that they were based on stories authored by Simon Nawagaththegama. The latter was shot by Donald Karunaratne, the former by Jayamanne. But still, on account of Nawagaththegama perhaps, both feel as though they were structured and created by the same crew.

I am not aware of the dynamics involved in creating and nurturing a work of art, least of all films. But looking at these two masterpieces, I’m reminded of how Satyajit Ray inadvertently contradicted what Gore Vidal take on Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. The two were the same insofar as the director was concerned: the cameraman was different in each. But in the case of Suddhilage Kathawa and Sagara Jalaya, it wasn’t just the cameramen: even the director was different. And yet, they didn’t seem worlds apart. They seemed to have been authored by the same person.

I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for this. Or perhaps I am wrong. I wouldn’t know. But seeing how both the director and cameramen were different, it would be unbecoming on my part to not pay a tribute to Jayamanne, who persisted despite these subtleties and gave us a film that at once belonged to its ultimate creator, the author and scriptwriter (Nawagaththegama deserves another space in this column to himself, not least when it comes to his contribution to our cinema). I believe that puts to rest the authorship debate and that puts to rest (at least partially) the myth that the director was and is king, for the truth of the matter is that in a collaborationist medium, there’s no supremacy. Only compromise. True, at some point one participant gets to have a bigger say in creating a work of art, but all in all, it’s about giving into a higher, overwhelming vision.

I believe, therefore, that cameramen are more often than not at the receiving end of the director. They are sensitive to the demands of other crew members, including scriptwriters, and in the end subsume their vision so completely that it’s hard to tell the difference from one work to another on the basis of their contribution. Just as well, I suppose, although one comes across instances of them having a bigger say nevertheless.

Jayamanne, going by all this, was no different. He shot some films and oversaw the camerawork in others. He was content in giving us landmarks in our cinema, subservient to the demands of the director but not, in the long run, completely deferential to it. For the role of the cinematographer is not to genuflect before the filmmaker, but to ensure that the film in question achieves its own ambition. There can be no ownership rights, then. There can also be no bragging rights. In the end, it’s about getting together.

Written for: Daily News TOWN AND COUNTRY, September 7 2016

The vilification of nationalism

Fernand Braudel in his influential series of books on history draws a distinction between ideal and reality in the formation of capital and free markets in Europe. He infers that what was practiced in the continent after the end of mercantilism or Bonapartist state-led growth models was a form of capitalism in which marketers, financiers, and renters manipulated the market to compel profit, far removed from the ideal of free market economics conceived of by Adam Smith.

Braudel implies, correctly I believe, that this dichotomy between the textbook and the practice of capitalism was rooted in the social structure of Europe’s city-states, a legacy of the Middle Ages and one which would have compelled him, had he lived, to regard as contributing to its present-day contradiction between deep-seated, almost xenophobic nationalism on the one hand and pan-continental cosmopolitanism on the other.

Nationalism is a misnomer. It has been tagged on collectives and individuals as a form of critique and has been inflated and set aside for praise by others. It has, a few contend, no place in a country trying to unshackle itself of the post-war moment, while others argue that to do away with it or discount its relevance would be to uproot a country’s efforts at reconciliation. This week’s article is about the conflict or clash between nationalism and reconciliation, a more prominent problem, I believe, than that between secularism and multiculturalism discussed last week.

Ignoring the majority

The problem with the previous regime was that it (gave the impression that it) saw reconciliation from a majoritarian stance, in that it began laudably (the LLRC, for all its flaws, went beyond its mandate to achieve multiethnic dialogue) but then deteriorated owing to key figures in the government pandering to extremist parties. They did not discount nationalism but committed the other sin: they inflated it. This compels two questions: what’s the role of nationalism in any reconciliation process and what, if at all, is its potential to undermine that same process?

As I commented earlier, reconciliation begins with equality and ends (though not completely) with equity. And why? Because a country, as civil society activist Jehan Perera has frequently and correctly noted, is composed of more than one nation. In Sri Lanka these nations are many (Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim, Burger, what not) and can cause rupture, given cultural diversity AND the fact that we are a small country. Each “nation” (viewed this way) has its own set of aspirations, beliefs, hopes, and fears. So the first step towards acknowledging the need to move forward is not, as certain writers say today, to do away with those and embrace an all-encompassing identity, but to address them in a way which accords parity of status, privilege, and position to all.

Parity, to the best of my mind, must be absolute, and for that reason it must account for the nationalisms of everyone: the ethnic supremacy of the majority and the self-determination of the minority, while considering the one as exclusivist and racist as the other. For that matter, parity must begin by equalising both majority and minority while accounting for global realities, which is another way of saying that the ethnic majority in Sri Lanka (the Sinhalese) are the ethnic minority elsewhere, with the opposite being true for the Tamil and Muslim minorities. Acknowledging this is a first step. A necessary first step.

The problem with those scripting reconciliation now is that they’ve gone blind to this curious dichotomy between the national and global when it comes to the majority-minority divide. As no less a figure than Dr Dayan Jayatilleka (who is no sympathiser of majoritarianism) has noted, this concurrent preponderance (locally) and marginalisation (internationally) of the Sinhalese served to heighten, not assuage, their fears of invasion from within or without, which goes to show that the mere predominance of one group over another in a local context doesn’t automatically mean one should ridicule and ignore the aspirations of that group. Again, acknowledging this is a necessary first step.

The truth then is that extremism shows the lack of recognition meted out to a social group, whether or not its aspirations are conceded to in terms of statutory provisions, guarantees, and amendments. As noted last week, the fact of Article Nine of our Constitution recognising the State’s commitment to Buddhism is cosmetic: it (thankfully) doesn’t affirm the supremacy of one ethnicity (or faith) over another but in fact QUALIFIES itself through Articles 10 and 14 (even though the latter of these, which guarantees the right to practise another faith, isn’t entrenched and can be, if at all, amended through the Parliament). Moreover, if you peruse the post-1994 political practice here you will come across instances where the government BOTH pandered to extremism AND paid lip-service to the fears and doubts of a collective.

The solution to all this, if it can be achieved at all, would be to draw a line between conceding ground to the supremacist and conceding ground to the legitimate concerns of the majority. The problem, however, is in how we’ve confused the one for the other, or how we’ve tried to do away with any distinction between manifestations of extremism and the demands of a collective. In other words, tragic though it is, we’ve chosen to blind ourselves to the nationalism of one collective but open ourselves rather too much to the “nationalism” (defined according to ethnic parameters) of the other.

Let’s put this in another way. Those unwilling to cut some slack to the dominant collective are quick to do so for other collectives. Those opposed to drawing “Us v Them” demarcations along the lines of the majority agree, by omission or commission, to their being drawn by the minority. Those quick to lend an ear to minority grievances are slow to do the same for the majority. Those factoring in the minority/majority divide in the national sphere are myopic to the reversal of that divide elsewhere. Those arguing that there’s no need for identity are slow in recognising that minoritarian politicians indulge considerably in identity politics.

In short, those quick to factor in the minority in the reconciliation are intent on scripting the majority out. There are two problems with this approach, hypocritical as it is and unhelpful as it eventually becomes.

The reconciliation game and the nationalist thrust

The first and most important problem is that the nationalists win whether you accept them or not. O, not because they are racists but because despite the crudest outside force, the collectives in and of a country tend to prevail over other factors. Let’s not forget, after all, that what transpired in 2009 (as I’ve pointed out before) wasn’t just the triumph of a State in debt over a privileged organisation receiving as much as 600 million dollars from its outfits in the West but a victory of national resolve over international pressure. This wasn’t 1987, because in 1987 the legal and political situation in the country was precarious, with an insurrection around the corner and pogroms aimed against the minority forcing the inevitable result: the emergence of a minoritarian elite that, for the next two decades, called the shots in the government’s war effort.

Going by that, any attempt at marginalising the majority would fail, particularly since their point comes through whether or not they are listened to. There’s more than one way for a collective to voice their aspirations, and if they are denied official channels, they will eventually prevail using other ways and means (which is how, for instance, the PTOMS agreement with the LTTE was shelved, when a group of monks held a fast unto death). Which goes to show what I pointed out before: in any multiethnic dialogue, the minority and majority must be treated equally. Weightings and proportions come later, when equality is superseded by equality.

The second and bigger problem, however, is that denying recognition to the majority is pretty much the same as shooting oneself in the foot, because nationalism has a way of deteriorating into racism if denied for long. And I’m not talking about the majority only: the fact is that all collectives, if not listened to, resort to methods that exist outside the formal social system of a country. You can’t script out realities, after all: not numbers, not preponderance, and not strength. If you do, you end up caving into other collectives so much that the ignored social group vents out frustration in unseemly, unsavoury ways, 1958 being the most obvious example.

The problem with the Sinhalese is that they carry a double burden: they are the majority, but because of their numerical strength they’re not just forced to be responsible for any manifestation of extremism but are also debarred from proclaiming their identity on the basis that they should be content with preponderance. This schizophrenic attitude to their aspirations, I believe, comes out well in certain minoritarian politicos who claim that there’s no such thing as the minority or majority and THEN claim that a portion of the country “belongs” to them. They are as quick to sing “This Land Belong To You” as they are to declare ownership of a province or region, as quick in pointing out the ethnic dimensions of one collective attacking theirs as they are in denying those of their own attacking another.

How the West became secular

Fernand Braudel did more than just show how capitalism began. He showed us the demographic and ethnic dimensions to its evolution in the West. On that count Marx got it wrong when he argued that capitalism would do away with borders: the link between it and nationalism was so strong that in later centuries, it tended to define nations according to the collective which wielded economic power. That is how the West became secular: by making sure that the faith of the dominant prevailed over the faith of the not-so dominant. I pointed this out last week in such self-contradictory provisions as Article Two of the Norwegian Constitution.

That is also how the West ended up privileging assimilation over multiculturalism, an irony given that it’s demanding the latter from Sri Lanka even as we celebrate it more than them! After all, it’s not conjecture that in America, despite Barack Obama’s presidency, the blacks are discriminated against in the legal and political process. It’s not conjecture that in France, the burkini is banned while iconography belonging to the dominant faith is not. It’s not conjecture that xenophobes compelled Brexit and what’s more, that they are emerging throughout the continent.

And no, it’s not conjecture that they are quick to deny nationalism in the East but not so when they declare unilateral action against their “enemy”. As the late Regi Siriwardena once noted, the economic progress of Europe and the United States doesn’t simplify the battle between it and Islamic extremism to one between modernity and fundamentalism but actually hides the (superficially dormant) ethnic ideology of the West. Doesn’t mean one should side with the fundamentalists, but then again when both sides declare fealty to fanaticism, what to choose and more importantly, who to believe? And when these same secularists (in name only) become the scriptwriters of reconciliation in countries far removed from their way of life, aren’t chaos and vaguely defined multiethnic dialogue the inevitable outcomes?

Concluding remarks

True, these are perspectives. Opinions. But they all point in the same direction. They show us that without factoring in the cultural realities of a country, reconciliation can only be compelled artificially. Not naturally. The scriptwriters of reconciliation come from cultures that survive through forced integration and assimilation, and so when they demand their conception of multiculturalism here, there should and will be someone to question it. Not because they have no right to have a say and help us, but because in so doing they can’t be allowed to affirm a common identity FOR US without the consent of the governed (as the US Constitution declares) and without taking the demands of ALL groups into account.

So I conclude: there is nationalism. There is also racism. Drawing the line between the two is difficult. But denying them is undesirable. And why? Because nationalism denied can, in the long run and if that denial involves forgetting and rubbishing the identity of the majority, deteriorate into racism, a form of racism which vents out frustration outside the established social system of a country.

Yes, reconciliation is needed. But if the process is broke, going by all these reflections, fix it one must. The problem with the previous regime was that it boosted nationalism. The problem with those writing the reconciliation game today is that they’re downplaying it. Both are in the wrong. Both are misconceived. Correcting them isn’t just a question of conceding ground to a social group, hence. It’s a question of creating dialogue between ethnicities.

Written for: Ceylon Today, September 6 2016

Amarasiri Peiris: On the artiste and the audience

Artistes have their views. They voice them from time to time. True, they come out less regularly than we’d want them to, but when they do they’re frank enough to call a spade a spade. The more humble among them, I believe, manage to concede their own inadequacies when indulging in this. Few do, yes, but mercifully they aren’t a minority. Being the veterans they are, they’ve traversed enough to realise that for all the shifts in time and aesthetic tastes, what they bequeathed to us survives and therefore, remains the standard by which we continue to judge and applaud them. Amarasiri Peiris, who remains frank and calls a spade a spade like most of his colleagues, has bequeathed much to us, going by that.

I first heard him, I remember, when I was 10. We were travelling to Colombo, back when Colombo was “far away” and visits to which warranted a song or two over the radio. The song was “Oba Apple Malak Wage”, which has since remained his signature for me for the simple reason that it sums up the man’s vocal texture and frankness. When I spoke with him the other day that was, of course, all there: he has mellowed and continues to mellow, but thankfully, I suspect, he retains that texture. Not surprisingly, he’s still at it here and abroad, and those who follow and fawn on him continue to do so in increasing numbers.

Amarasiri Peiris was born to a musical family. His father, Albert Peiris, had been a respectable figure at Radio Ceylon. “He knew almost all the celebrated figures in his field, including H. W. Rupasinghe. In fact ‘Rupasinghe Master’ was a regular visitor to our house, where he and my father would discuss and debate on music. I was witness to all this as a young boy. So I guess you can say I was tutored in music before I decided to strike out my own path.” Curiously and despite all this however, Albert didn’t want his son to opt for music. I ask him why. He smiles as he replies, “Back then the music industry was as lacking in opportunity as it is today. Perhaps my father sensed that, perhaps he didn’t, but in the end it was my mother who identified my penchant for music and encouraged it.”

He opted for music after he passed his O Levels. While doing his A Levels in the early sixties, he applied to the University of Visual and Performing Arts, back then known as Haywood College. “I was selected in 1963,” he remembers, “after which I had to go through a six year course. It wasn’t easy, considering that in those six years we were virtually debarred from seeking employment elsewhere, but in the end I managed to survive them.” The Principal at Haywood at the time was Lionel Edirisinghe, who despite his detractors today is fondly remembered by Amarasiri: “Our country owes him a great debt, in particular because it was because of him that we have a music form we can claim today. He also was responsible for creating a vast, veritable reserve of music teachers.”

Amarasiri would pass out in 1968, and a short while later, would be taken into Radio Ceylon by the then Chairman and Director-General, Neville Jayaweera. Initially taken in as an A-grade violinist, he would rise up to become a Conductor, Controller, and by the time he retired in 2005, Director of Music. His brush with radical politics would get him into trouble after 1977, and for three years he was without a job. “That was in the late eighties. During D. B. Wijetunga’s presidency, I was called back and was paid in full for those three years I’d been away.”

I ask him as to what he contributed during his time as an administrator in the SLBC. “Well, for one thing, I noticed that none of the programs in the Sinhala sevaya took our listeners beyond the jana gee and Oriental tradition. So I introduced programs on Western symphonies and operas. These were already played out in the English service, but Sinhala audiences didn’t really listen to that.” What of his fascination with Bach, Beethoven, and the Western tradition, then? “All that goes back to my days at Heywood, so when I was working in the SLBC I realised that if our audiences were to be discerning, they should be opened to the outside world. I believe that is what made me what I am today. We must appreciate everything, not just what we can claim as ours.”

His penchant for Western music also goes back to his first encounter with his biggest associate in later years, Premasiri Khemadasa. No biographical sketch of Amarasiri would be complete without mentioning Khemadasa, so I ask him about the man. He predictably becomes more eager and opens his heart. While spatial constraints prevent me from quoting him completely, I will say this: he sees Khemadasa not as a guru but as a grand collaborator, who instilled in him an appreciation of his field. “I was a virtual experiment for him,” he laughs, “My first song was ‘Landune’. He took my voice and varied it, and despite certain reservations expressed by some of his associates, he never stopped using me thereafter.”

At a time when most veterans are wont to disparaging and critiquing modernity, Amarasiri is refreshingly more lenient. For starters, he doesn’t see deterioration in lyricists today. It is a sign of the man’s humility that far from trashing them, he rates them more highly than many of those he worked with in his time. I ask him why, piqued and puzzled as I am, and he readily explains.

“In my day we collaborated when we composed, wrote, and performed a song. In later years, for some strange reason, that spirit of collaboration was superseded by an unnecessary fight for ownership and bragging rights. I will not mention names here, but certain lyricists, composers, and relatives thereof have sent me letters of demand and have forced me to stop singing their songs. I would have appreciated it had they opted for negotiation, but due to their hostility I can only conclude that time has swelled their heads and made them forget their roots. I don’t see this with today’s lyricists. They are thankfully more discerning. And humble.”

He rattles off a list of those lyricists he’s worked with recently, in particular Danister Perera and Dhammika Bandara, and concludes with a flourish: “Before we become artistes we must become human. These youngsters have realised this more than their elders. Tells a lot about our music industry.”

Given his unfortunate encounters with those same elders, who does he think owns a song? “It depends on where it’s placed. If it’s in a film, it belongs to the producer. If it’s standalone, according to the law, the lyricist and composer claim ownership while the singer claims performance rights. The problem here is that I’ve been debarred from those rights on the pretext that by claiming them I am violating the rights of the lyricist and composer!” A tragic Catch-22 dilemma, no doubt. And the end result? “I don’t sing those songs anymore. Not because I can’t, but because I’m hurt by how hostile these people have become.”

While praising modernity however, he isn’t one to commend it blindly. Among its demerits, he cites the discernible confusion between form and content sustained by today’s singers. “Look at Michael Jackson. He sang about love, mankind, and this world we live in. He sang with enough meaning to make us aware about the message he was bringing up. Compare that with those here who try to imitate the way he walked and danced without giving a damn about his message. These imitators have misunderstood form for substance and pretty much done away with the latter.”

All this of course offers much for reflection. Amarasiri Peiris has reflected well. I remember no less a figure than Carlo Fonseka, who collaborated with him over the song "Yanna Giya We" (which sounds like a dirge on lost love but is actually about a lost pet bird), paying tribute to his voice, “as enchanting as it is and as strangely mystical as it seems” (his words to me, from three years back). The good Professor got it right there, I believe. The man’s two biggest assets, his vocal texture and his dexterity with both Western and Eastern musical forms, have hence marked him out well.

Speaking strictly for myself, I am yet to come across a vocalist here who’s capable of the range of emotion and experience he’s dipped into all his life. He has that rare ability to elongate or shorten whatever he sings, which (and I am being simple here, given that I am no musicologist) articulates emotion and in particular, loss, unrequited love, grief, frustration, and sorrow acutely. I am reminded of those few lines in “Minisa Marana Thunak”, which sum up Anoja Weerasinghe’s feelings of jealousy and frustration in Parakrama Niriella’s film Siri Medura: "ලිහිල් සළුව අනතුරේ වැටෙද්දී / පයෝධර තුඩු ඉකිබිඳිද්දී." That no other person could have articulated the sexual nuances of those lines, or for that matter the raw, almost savage image wrought by them, we don’t doubt. And we shouldn’t.

Written for: Ceylon Today LITE, September 4 2016

Shards of a Thousand Mirrors

Review of Nayomi Munaweera's "Island of a Thousand Mirrors." First published in 2012.

Shehan Karunatilaka praises Nayomi Munaweera’s “Island of a Thousand Mirrors” as "lyrical, heartfelt, and awash with imagery." All adjectives and nice words which describe it well, I should say.

The book is Nayomi’s first, and like other first novels it twists and turns in ways those assessing it can’t do justice to if the critic is more concerned about making it conform to his or her idealisation of its subject-matter. That, however, does not preclude comment and critique. Especially when it comes to subject-matter, one can add (with tongue in cheek).

In a review written around three years ago to "The Nation", Vihanga Perera takes Nayomi to task because of what he perceives to be her novel's "flouted project". He concedes, in his special way, that it contributes to the postwar discourse, but that halfway through it betrays half a dozen weaknesses which crop up on account of the writer's inexperience and "uprootedness. Relevant, but hardly the only or even main reference-point we can use in assessing the novel's (de)merits.

Nayomi Munaweera's novel isn't just about the war. It's about the colonial and postcolonial world this country inhabited, the transition from the one to the other which independence brought about, and the fact that this transition led to inevitable outcomes which, while tragic and certainly inimical to broader citizenry, nevertheless happened. Inevitable is a strong word, I agree. But no other will do.

How well does Munaweera's novel stand up to the task she's put up for it? She oscillates to and from first-person narrative, and on that basis the strongest sections are those in which the narrator is articulating her own experiences. Up until the fifth chapter, in which she is born, she dabbles in recounting a past which oversees a transformation: not just from the colonial to the postcolonial, but from an era of amorphous identities to an era where identity is predicated on race, faith, and communalism.

This can be seen right after the death of the unnamed (or un-nameable?) Judge, who "sports three-piece suits" and whose clan dreamt of teenage years at Oxford or Cambridge: the moment he dies, the family fortunes plummet, his wife (Sylvia Sunethra) has to fund her daughter and herself, and she seeks the "patronage" of a traditionalist Tamil family with money on their hands. "Named after Lord Shiva's privates," Sylvia mutters (the Tamil family name is Shivalingam), and adds: "These Tamils. So shameless."

The death of the Judge, in a symbolic sense, is the death of an old order buttressed by the Oxbridge elite: the fires of racism start to burn soon after their funerals are over. The problem for the author, however, is that she caricatures so much in these chapters that we don't know whether to laugh or not: the Linga-Singha wars, as she calls them, are supposed to be a microcosm of the civil conflict to come, but where (one can legitimately ask) is the augur, the Cassandra? For that reason perhaps, these domestic wars supply humour on a scale which jars as the chapters progress.

Munaweera is less successful, I think, when describing Saraswathi, who emerges as an idealist who, like most idealists, gets ravaged by the enemy and transforms. And to this end I agree with Vihanga when he implies (again, in his own special way) that Munaweera's Saraswathi is as much a construct as Nihal de Silva's Kamala (in the latter's "Road From Elephant Pass"). He could have added that this sustains and perpetuates the archetypal "Sinhalised" Tamil woman we're accustomed to seeing pretty much everywhere in our cultural discourse: who start out as idealists and get their dreams, visions, and moral qualms swept away by a savage reality. Not that Munaweera alone is guilty of this, of course.

On the other hand, she is most successful (as I pointed out earlier) in her depiction of Yasodhara and Lanka, and that too after they migrate to the United States. I don't think it's a coincidence that between their departure from and return to Sri Lanka, we see Saraswathi's rise, fall, and resurrection: it's plotted in a way to make us feel their parallel lives: Yasodhara and Lanka embittered in a land they can't call their own, Saraswathi pining for a land denied to her by her own people (from other terrains).

I personally thought this was commendable, despite the author's inexperience and despite the laboriousness of her writing (she's worked hard at sustaining her plot, we feel), because she appeared more concerned about making a statement than about constructing (and later flouting) a “project.” Not that her depiction of Saraswathi is three-dimensional. Far from it. But that's beside the point here, something even Vihanga admits when he writes that the novel, "like most flouted programs... has enough to merit a prize and recognition."

On a final note, Vihanga alleges that Munaweera's book ends with a "blatantly Rajapakshist note." What he means by this is that Yasodhara overcomes the tragedy of her sister's death by refusing to acknowledge victory on May 18, 2009, reflecting on the 80,000 lives lost, and hoping for the future.

I don't think that's "Rajapakshist" in any conceivable sense, not only because Munaweera's book would hardly sit well with the nationalists or extremists but because (paraphrasing what Vihanga wrote) her ending doesn't "urge us to deselect the past in favor of the optimism of a future." Unlike, say, Nihal de Silva's book, there's no embrace of a hopeful future here, only grief, sorrow, and conditional happiness: not "We Shall Overcome" but "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?", not "The war is over, let us forget the past and heal the present", but "The past is behind, let us look at and be humbled by it from time to time."

And so I conclude: despite her obvious inexperience and despite the fact that she lived miles away from the country even as it burnt and even as our forefathers added the proverbial fuel to fire, I salute Nayomi Munaweera for a debut that contributes something to our literary discourse, however small (and marginalised) that contribution may be.

The problem with her first novel, therefore, is that it's not just about mirrors. It's about shards. Picking those shards up is no easy task, especially for debut writers. Munaweera knows this more than anyone else, I guess. Even if her first attempt at fiction is, as Shehan Karunatilaka claims, awash with imagery.

Written for: The Island LEISURE, August 28 2016