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| Friday, 9 April 2004 |
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Lasting tribute to popular singer Victor Ratnayake Geethanath Kudaligama's Maruthaye Miyurusara is a semi-biographical account of Victor Ratnayake's eventful life as a vocalist and musician of repute. Packed with all the necessary details about his life and achievements, the book is an ever lasting tribute to a great singer who is very much among our midst. We have passed many phases as far as Sinhala music is concerned. Ananda Samarakoon, Sunil Santha and W. D. Amaradeva paved the way for a Sri Lankan identity in the music scene. Meanwhile, Victor Ratnayake built a bridge across popular and classical music. He helped a generation of music lovers to appreciate local music. His youthful voice and the lilting music coupled with lyrics, such as, Soka Senasum, Sihil Sulan Relle, and Pave Vala etc appealed to the masses. Author Kudaligama has taken a lot of trouble to produce the book. In fact, he has visited Victor Ratnayake's birthplace Kadugannawa, and other places like Wattegama, Meegammana, Peradeniya, Kalutara and Nagoda to collect material for the book. Sometimes, he had made these trips along with the singer. The author has been able to meet Victor's teachers, friends and well-wishers. Sometimes, he has been able to obtain valuable information from Victor's family members. Victor's entry into music itself is an interesting story. One day he had been meddling with a foot bellow harmonium at a party. To his surprise somebody pulled him by the ear and threw him out. Victor was humiliated but on the following day he was in for a surprise. His father presented him with a similar musical instrument. Very soon his father became Victor's first and ardent fan. Victor Ratnayake became a popular figure after singing "Sihil Sulan Relle. Unknown to many he composed the song while he was teaching at Ettalapitiya, Bandarawela. He got the idea to write it when he travelled by train to the upcountry. His first film song Sara Sonduru Mal Petali sung for Hanthane Kathava became a trend setter. Premasiri Khemadasa's music enhanced its value. Maruthaye Miyurusara contains a list of films and teledramas for which Victor Ratnayake directed the music. In addition, the author has given a list of songs sung by Victor for Sinhala films and the radio. Taken as a whole Maruthaye Miyurusara is a lasting tribute to Victor Ratnayake. - R. S. Karunaratne Man's inhumanity to man Yuddaye Athuru Kathavak "I am like Dante, I walk through hell, but I am not burning." This quote may seem enigmatic but epitomises the meandering saga of a Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust through an almost incredible tale of twists and turns in her life that metamorphoses from a hunted Jewish slave girl led by fortuitous events to end up as the wife of a Nazi officer to reclaim the meaning, security and peace of a normal life she yearned for. Our protagonist is an Austrian woman, Edith Hahn Beer, who has gone down memory lane and compressed her archive of wartime letters, pictures and documents into a very readable book, "The NAZI Officer's wife," to provide glimpses of life for the Jews under the infamous Nazi regime and its impact on her and family. The story begins with her halcyon days in the ambience of her beloved family in vienna and takes one through her rapidly changing circumstances after the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938, the outbreak of the Second World War, the trials and tribulations faced by her family and friends due to persecution of Jews, the rounding up of this community for eventual extermination, right up to her individual fate determined as much by events of random luck as by her own volition. That one's destiny is often influenced by the most seemingly insignificant happenings in life is driven home here by Edith's chance visit to a cinema where the newsreel showing the official opening of a "Great German Art Exhibition" happened to project a scene of a woman's form in sculpture. However, this female form depicted a gesture that pointedly seemed, in her fantasy, to address her with the words: 'come Edith, come to me,'promising peace and freedom. Mother's voice In a flash, Edith had made up her mind to follow her mother's voice, as it were. She decided to go to Munich in Germany. The die was cast. And with ingenuous help from friends regarding her papers, she travels with trepidation to the German city. While in Munich, as luck would have it, Edith visits an art exhibition to try to appear a normal German/Aryan. Here, a man named Werner Vetter, a Nazi, strikes up a conversation and the real drama begins. Further revelations would fascinate the readers but suffice to say that before the end of the war, the Vetter couple are blessed with a daughter. The liberation of Berlin finds a further twist to the plot whereby Edith finds herself rehabilitated in her true Jewish identity. Her double life comes to an end. We have to remember that Russians liberated Brandenburg, where Edith lived during the war, and was occupying a part of Berlin that would become East Germany. By virtue of Edith's training as a lawyer in Vienna, she briefly becomes a judge but her position soon becomes untenable under the Soviet regime. Dreamland Eidth, seeing the writing on the wall, quietly emigrates to England with her child and finally leaves for the dreamland of all Jews - Israel, where she now lives. To the reader who might wonder: "Why now?", the answer can only point to the sometimes compulsive need for catharsis in one who has suffered so much. The demons had to be expelled from the system. The system is racy and the narrative is gripping. The translation of "The NAZI officer's wife" from English into Sinhala, rendered by Sri Lankan author and film Director Ranjith Kuruppu, (also author of "Maranaye Doratuwa"), will enable readers to revisit the eternal theme of 'man's inhumanity to man', redeemed fortunately by the ever present streak of kindness, goodness and compassion that still inhabits the human heart everywhere. And it seems a story that can be retold again and again. - M. N. Hebbar, Bonn, Germany. |
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