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| Wednesday, 14 July 2004 |
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Undrawn portrait for unwritten poetry Gleanings by K. S. Sivakumaran Before I actually go into the main topic of this week's column, please let me record two observations. One is on the death of a scholar in his own right - Wilfred M. Gunasekera - at the beginning of this month at 92. It was only the previous day he phoned me to come and see him after learning that I am back in Sri Lanka. He wanted me to interview him. I suggested that, my friend E. M. G. Edirisinghe, who writes profusely on both Sinhala and English, would be a better person and in fact requested EMG to do so. Since the latter is a busy person, he told me that he will get prior approval from R. S. Karunaratne and then do an interview with WG. WG was an old friend of mine. I first met him through an Indian friend of mine, although I have read some of Wilfred's erudite articles before. This Indian friend Vembakkam K. Subramaniyan was the procurer of books from South Asia for the Library of Congress in the U.S. The LOC had their Asian headquarters in New Delhi, India. Subramaniyam, unknown to me before, wrote to me to assist him procuring books in Thamil by Lankan writers. He had earlier acquired my little booklet Tamil Writing in Sri Lanka (1974) from some source. So he came down to Colombo and met me and then introduced me to Wilfred, who was then working for the now non-existent W.H. Caves bookshop. He was the primary agent for the Library of Congress. Incidentally, Vembakkam Subramaniyam's dear wife also passed away recently, which news I came to know rather belatedly.
The late Wilfred Gunasekera was a nattily dressed (western style) man with a smiling face and kind disposition. He had a thorough Sinhala consciousness, but not in any respect averse to other cultures. He was a well-bred cultured intellectual. The most important thing about him was that he prided himself as a relative of the legendary John de Silva, in whose memory a theatre exists in Colombo. The numerous articles( most of them worthwhile and which the academics seldom explored) should be collected for the benefit of the young researchers. He lived a full life and passed away at a ripe age enriched with down-to- earth experiences. May he attain Nibbana. Our history I was saddened by reading during the last few weeks consecutively two translations in English under the heading 'Our History ' (implying history of the Sinhala people), as if the history of the Thamil people does not form part of Lankan history, in the Children's Tabloid of a weekly English newspaper.
The repeated headings reading something like 'Tamil commander attracted towards a Sinhala Queen'. 'The Last Tamil Commander' and the like spotlights the racial connotation. And worse still, the names of the supposed Tamil invaders do not sound Thamil names at all. There is a mistake on the part of many people to mix up any name from India as Thamil names. The minds of the youngsters are poisoned by such unscrupulous attempts by a few writers and journalists and naturally giving way to Thamil Nationalism. I must also bring to the notice of our readers, who are not ultra-nationalists, that the Thinakutal on July 3 reported that a recent photographic exhibition depicted the ravages and destruction of war in the southern part of Sri Lanka and there was none of the massive destruction of lives and property in the Thamil-speaking areas. Why is this one-sided depiction? Do we really want as one nation respecting each other or do we want to be monoracial, monolingual, monocultural? Tri-lingual presenters While only a fraction of the total population of the country remain ultra-nationalists and intolerant, majority of the magnanimous majority community remain compassionate to true Buddhist traditions. I was happy to watch Bandula Padmakumara reading the headlines of Thamil newspapers in his program in the mornings over Swarnavahini and Jeevendiran and another young man (I couldn't get his name ) reading the headlines of Sinhala newspapers in the early morning program 'Good Morning Sri Lanka' over Shakthi TV. These are good signs for the future. Dominic Jeeva In the field of writing in Thamil, both in Thamilnadu and Sri Lanka, there are at least three people who have ' Jeeva' as part of their names: P. Jeevanandam, an orator, writer and Marxist politician in India, Dominc Jeeva and Anthony Jeeva. The last too names are not unfamiliar to at least a select lot of writers and critics and dramatists in the Sinhala medium. Let me focus only on Dominic Jeeva for the present. He celebrated his 77th birthday on June 27 last. The fact that even writers, academics and others who do not necessarily subscribe to his brand of Marxist ideology were present on the occasion was an indicator that he is respected by everybody for whatever he is worth. He released three publications on the occasion. Dominic Jeeva edits a monthly journal on literature for more than four decades. It's called Mallikai. He is also the publisher of many books, an author of many books and a writer of short stories. Although he cannot boast of an academic background, he made his way to be one of the topmost writers in Thamil. Some of his works are translated into Sinhala too. Coming from a then downtrodden caste in Jaffna, he established himself as a person to be emulated. His search for knowledge and his battered experiences have made him a man of real stuff. I would call him an ' unacknowledged professor ' taking into account some of his ideas found in many of his works. He is a voracious reader and a lover of the humankind. His moral indignation on several social and personal issues are understandable. Writers, academics, artistes and others using the Sinhala language should be indebted to him because he cared to publish as front cover pictures of them with a write - up on them in his ' Mallikai '. Even during the horrible Black July of 1983, he had the late G.B. Senanayake's picture on the cover. The most important thing in his career is the publication of his semi-autobiography he had published in Thamil turned into English. The title of the book is Undrawn Portrait For Unwritten Poetry. I don't think that it is an appropriate title even in Thamil because factually what he calls as poetry had already been portrayed several times. The translation is by Kandiah Kumarasamy (Nallaikumaran), a Lankan now living in Melbourne, Australia. The book is interesting in that it shows how a translator could think in his mother tongue and just put the ideas just as he thinks without any embellishment or colouring. In that respect, this work would be a classic piece of understanding 'Literatures in English '. The variety of English as displayed in this book would please any reader of writing in English. As for the content of the book, it is a rich endorsement of the writer Jeeva's steady progress as a hairdresser to present heights. I wish to record here that even if the writer Dominic Jeeva has totally forgotten, that he came to be known to the non-Thamil speaking readers through a review of his book Pathukai, a collection of short stories, which won the first Sri Lankan Sahitiya Academy Award for Thamil fiction in 1964. This review appeared in the then Sunday Times edited by the versatile author and journalist Muttiah, now based in Chennai, and assisted by Rodrigo, the late Eshan Sourjah. The review was by K.S. Sivakumaran. Contact : [email protected] **** Back **** |
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